I'd ban kissing! (From Bucks Free Press)

I'd ban kissing!

3:35pm Monday 21st December 2009 in Desperate Housewife

Welcome to my first blog! I have chosen to write under the name “Desperate Housewife,” but I’m afraid that I won’t (always) be writing about good looking gardeners and the like! I suppose I am just desperate to find out whether I am the only one who seems to find so many aspects of modern day living rather trying!

The issue I want to touch on today is kissing. I have never felt comfortable when people are making public displays of affection, but that may partly stem from jealously! No, it’s not the passionate kiss I want to write about, it’s the kissing that we all seem to do nowadays when we greet our friends or family, or even our in-laws. I am in my mid thirties, and I am sure that as a child people simply greeted each other with a “hello!” and perhaps a hand shake. We left the kissing-on-meeting to the French and other Europeans. I first noticed that we had adopted this greeting about a decade ago. I, for one, have had more colds in the last decade than I did in the two and a half decades before then- is there a link, I wonder?

Even the French officials took the decision over a month ago to ban “la bise,” in schools and businesses and all Government offices to try and stop the spread of swine flu. However, here we are all still kissing each other.

Last week it was my husband’s Birthday and we invited his family over for a meal. I had already prepped my children to blow kisses to everyone as they arrived rather than to run up and kiss them, as I knew that some of the visiting family members had been feeling under the weather. So, my two year old blew lovely kisses as her grandparents and family walked through the door. What I hadn’t figured on was my husband saying “Oh give Great Granny a proper kiss!” at which point my youngest child was kissed on the lips by my husband’s Grandmother. She is a dear old lady, but she was ill in bed all the week before with suspected swine flu. My youngest daughter was then kissed on the lips by both her Grandparents and on the cheek by all the others. I looked on in horror, anticipating being up through the night administering Calpol to her in a few day’s time. Why don’t people have common sense? Surely it’s obvious that if you have been ill, you don’t kiss small children- or anyone really. I thought it was very selfish. As for my husband instigating it, despite the fact that I had tried to adopt the French kissing ban in our house...well I often have trouble with him, as I think you’ll gather if you read my future blogs!