It’s out of control! If I play doubles first thing, have a lunch, then go to perhaps two parties in an evening, I can be embracing more than a hundred people in the course of my day.
It’s so unhygienic — especially in the flu season, when someone gives you a sticky peck before telling you in the next breath how ill they are.
It all makes me envy the royals, who have a trusty and time-honoured system of self-protection from this imposition.
Princess Anne sticks out a white-gloved hand. You curtsey to the Queen and other members of the royal family, unless you know them a bit, where — at their lead — you are permitted to perform ‘the kiss, bob, snog’ (Nicky Haslam, arbiter of all these important things, explains it’s actually kiss, curtsey/bow, hug and is reserved for friends).
‘Isn’t kissing becoming too, too common?’ I complained to Nicky.
‘Yes, disgusting and extraordinary,’ he agreed, before telling me of a Tory peer who insists on kissing him on the lips.
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