Last night, I originally intended to go to Box, for a few gins, while listening to the impeccable music played by the resident Sunday night DJ, ‘DQ’.
Instead, I ended up in The Cell in Shawlands, drinking lager and listening to something that can really only be described as “offensive noise”. It was the sort of music, played at the sort of volume that a resident of Basra might put on the CD player to block out the ambient noise of the bloody violence and chaos outside.
Now, for those that haven’t been to The Cell, it is a reasonably small club, with one room – so the music that is being played is more or less thrust upon you. However, when I went into the toilet there was rock music playing on the tiny speakers in there.
I struck up a conversation, while washing my hands, with another guy about this strange situation and the idea of just bringing a few tables and chairs into the gents and enjoying some Led Zeppelin.
Now this was obviously a hypothetical idea, there was no way we would actually do it. Don’t be ridiculous! That would be insane and unhygienic! We were merely using it as a metaphor to point out just how bad the music upstairs was.
As I finished washing my hands, my acquaintance had just finished at the urinal and asked for my name. I told him my name, at which point he replied with his, offering his hand in a friendly gesture.
Now I had a problem. Having just washed my hands, would it be rude for me to reject his hand, seeing as he had not yet been to the sink? Would it be even ruder to shake his hand and then return to the sink and wash my own again? Would he even realise why I would be refusing to shake his hand or would he think I was in some way rejecting him as a person that was beneath me?
There were far too many questions in this 'etiquette debate' that I ended up just shaking his hand and then leaving the washroom as if nothing had happened…
Well I am British and therefore would rather run the risk of contracting Leptospirosis than mildly offending a complete stranger…
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2 comments:
You could have avoided this altogether, if you had just stuck to the no talking policy.
As Jim Jeffries says -
Look at it this way. I walk around all day shaking hands, touching door handles, stairways, newspapers picking up germs and then I touch my penis. If anything wash your hands before you go to the toilet. After that the horse has already bolted mate.
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