Fastidious, moi?

It's often said that oldies are more fastidious than the young, constantly complaining about this, that and the other thing.

I don't think that's true at all. Children are just as fastidious as the old, they simply fuss about different things.

They want a certain brand of trainers, or there's half a dozen foods they refuse to eat, or they hate certain colours, or their hair has got to be just so. Children can be so fussy over so many things that their parents despair.

In fact I have the impression kids are getting more fastidious by the day. They seem even more demanding and even keener to keep up with what their friends are doing and wearing and enthusing about. Or is that a mistaken impression?

Certainly when I was a kid I don't remember being especially demanding about anything at all. Most of the time I just did what my parents expected me to do. I ate what was put in front of me and I wore what my mother bought for me and I was polite and adaptable. My docility seems a bit pathetic by today's standards but I didn't find it abnormal at the time.

My personal fastidiousness is mainly centred on cleanliness and tidiness. I couldn't stand a house that was filthy dirty or full of clutter. Luckily Jenny is the same. A girlfriend and I once shared a flat with people who seemed oblivious to the increasing grubbiness and disorder and did nothing about it. After several exasperating weeks, we moved out.

Of course nobody likes to be described as fastidious. No, no, we just have our standards and we stick to them.

Nasty niffs

Interesting to read that during the pandemic 25 per cent of the population have stopped showering every day and 14 per cent have stopped using deodorant. Presumably because people aren't going out so much and don't see the point of such scrupulous hygiene.

It reminds me yet again that we're all a lot fussier about cleanliness than we were a few decades ago. When I was growing up I had a bath once a week and that was basically it (very few homes had showers at that time). I might wash other bits of me when the need arose, but otherwise the weekly bath was considered more than enough. And deodorants weren't used as routinely as they are now.

A lot of people must have been pretty whiffy but either nobody noticed or they thought it rude to mention it. I never noticed any general smelliness when I was young (apart from cigarette smoke), but then my sense of smell was always poor.

At some point people got much more hygiene-conscious, everyone was installing home showers, and deodorants were being lavishly applied. The under-washed began to feel distinctly unpopular as the super-washed multiplied.

But have we now gone to the opposite extreme of obsessive cleanliness? Some would say yes, that too much showering and washing removes the protective organisms from our skin and makes us more prone to infections. We've become terrified of producing the slightest unsavoury odour.

Personally I can't be bothered with baths any more, and I don't shower every day, only when I feel the need. Our bath has been used about three times since we moved in to this house 11½ years ago. I've never been keen on the wallow-in-a-bath-with-scented-candles scenario.

But one thing's for sure - blogging avoids all nasty niffs.

Lurking nasties

Goodness knows what's happened in the average hotel room before I occupy it, but I'm not too bothered. As long as it looks fairly clean and tidy, I'm not going to fret about all the nasty residues I might be unwittingly exposing myself to.

The fabulous Los Angelista just described a particularly unsavoury-looking hotel room she stayed in during a work trip. She said the bed looked so uninviting she actually slept on a chair rather than risk whatever might be living in the bed linen.

One of her commenters declared that most hotel rooms are so unhygienic (and he cites You Tube footage to prove it) he takes antiseptic wipes to disinfect every surface he's likely to use. He also puts the remote in a plastic bag and kips down in a sleeping bag rather than crawl between the sheets.

Well, this seems rather extreme to me, but who knows what horrible experiences he's had in the past, or what ghastly illness he's inadvertently acquired from seedier and grubbier guests?

Personally I've never contracted anything grisly after staying in a hotel (not even food poisoning), so I'm very sanguine about cleanliness standards. I wouldn't stay in a room that's visibly filthy but as long as it looks clean enough I'm not going to ask any questions. I'm certainly not giving the room an extra going-over on the off-chance that cholera or typhoid is incubating happily on the bidet.

Maybe I'm in the minority here. Maybe others are more germ-conscious than I am. I know there are plenty of women who still decline to sit on a toilet seat without a protective layer of tissues.

But I happen to believe my immune system is robust enough to resist the germs and toxins lurking mischievously in room 23's en-suite. As far as I'm concerned, they simply don't exist.
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Tuesday evening: I'm off to London for a couple of days to see my 88 year old mum. See you all again shortly.