Cough, cough, sniff, sniff, atchoo; snort, snort. That’s the soundtrack to travelling in London. This week, as the cold and frosty weather set in, it’s gone from backing-track to leading lady. I heard more honking snorts on the Circle line than on the average episode of Peppa Pig. And it’s ’orrible.
Step out of the sniffathon Tube and it’s not much better on arrival at the office. Sucking snot the wrong way down what should be a one-way passage seems to be a case of one-upmanship: who can do it louder.
People: use a tissue.
I’m no fan of harking back to the past — life would, frankly, be almost unliveable without contact lenses, laptops — oh, and the wheel, electricity and all that. But at least in the Olden Days, people used handkerchiefs. Small, pocketed sheets of cotton-for-the-proles, silk ones for the rich. They were just as useful for a train station wave (see, for instance, The Railway Children) as a good cold-stopper in the carriage.
There’s no need to go quite so posh today. Frankly, a single-use tissue seems to me to be a whole lot more hygienic than a hanky. But could we all agree to use one? And none of this austerity-era shoving of said tissue back up the sleeve, either. Buy a pack from the pound shop, or nick toilet roll from the loo. Bury it in a recycling box rather than dropping it in a dustbin, if you want. But there’s no excuse to have it hanging around: blow snot, throw snot.
Just how much doing so would stop the lurgy strains currently zooming around the capital from infecting all of us is unquantifiable.
I came across some research claiming that a single, uncontrolled sneeze in a rush-hour commuter carriage can end up giving 150 fellow passengers a cold in a mere five minutes. The study came from a Dr Roger Henderson, labelled as a “flu expert”. But further reading revealed the study had been commissioned by the maker of the cold medicine Lemsip, so the trustworthiness of the research might, well, need to be sniffed at.
What has been proven, though, is that Tube travellers come into contact with more germs. Obviously all those gremlins lurking on escalator handles, chair fabrics and newspaper pages mean it’s no wonder office commuters catch more colds than home-workers.
A survey of Londoners last winter found heading to work on trains and buses doubled their chances of falling ill. Virtually all train travellers caught a cold, as did 87 per cent of bus and Tube passengers and three-quarters of those who drive to work — but only 55 per cent of cyclists and 50 per cent of walkers.
Sadly, we can’t all walk to work. It would take me most of the day and night to travel from bed to desk on foot. But we can stop the snorting. Need to cough? Turn your face into your shoulder. Carrying some extra phlegm? Blow your nose.
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It might stop us all getting sick this winter. And even if not, it would sound better. Anything — including the infinitely annoying “mind the gap” — is better than sitting next to someone auditioning to be star of the next Babe: Pig in the City soundtrack.
@lucytobin
