Holding your breath when you pass someone and other new pandemic habits

EVERYTHING has changed, and every stranger or shiny surface is potentially a vector of infection. Here are the new habits you’ve picked up: 

Holding your breath while walking past someone

Someone approaching? Could they be exhaling crimson clouds of deadly virus right into your face? As long as you don’t breathe for those couple of seconds until you pass them then you should be fine. Even doctors would surely recommend that.

Crossing the road to avoid people

The average Briton is performing more road-crossings on a stroll down the street than Frogger. You cross this way to avoid a jogger, that way to avoid a pensioner with shopping,  go up a side street to dodge a whole family, and suddenly you can’t remember where you were going or where you live.

Resenting anyone who talks in the supermarket

The supermarket is a silent, stressful place of three-point trolley manouvres and terrified eyes looking over facemasks. Anyone who talks, even if it is just on their own mobile while waiting in the spaced-out queue, isn’t taking this seriously enough.

Starting an underground tennis club

Players are well over two metres apart in tennis but society and its rules won’t let you play anymore. Found your own underground tennis club where you can safely exercise in an emphatically British way, living like a white-clad outlaw.

Keeping a baseball bat behind the door in case the virus takes on human form

It’s unlikely, but scientists don’t know everything, and a further mutation of the virus could cause it to take on the form of a human being and come to your house. It might even disguise itself as a close friend, relative or the postman. Trust nobody and keep one hand on your bat.