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.
How I envy Princess Anne’s white gloves. We civilians have no comparable barrier against the endless ‘mwah mwah’-ing of modern life (women who wear lipstick actually say ‘mwah mwah’ as they air-kiss so as not to smear) that must go on whenever A meets B.
I resent the fact that when I am introduced to a young stranger of either sex they will give me several smackers without so much as a by your leave. I find myself Lady Bracknelling — ‘Have we been introduced?’ — in my head. As Nicky H observes: ‘What’s wrong with saying “How nice to see/meet you?”’ Indeed. (Confession: I kiss Nicky on the lips, and about three other men in London, but only because I’m so pleased to see them and I hope them me.
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