I previously wrote a blog ‘the outside world has suddenly become a scary place’, talking about despite the fact I’m normally a confident person, because of Covid19 I felt frightened to go outside my front door.

I now find myself looking at the other side of the coin and sometimes feel nervous inside my house, which is normally my ‘safe haven’

I have been in, what I think, is a very fortunate position in the fact there’s just me and my cat in my house. I therefore didn’t have to worry about constantly cleaning surfaces as much as if there had been others in the household as I knew where I’d been and what I had touched. Also the fact that I am constantly using sanitiser and washing my hands made me feel confident that everything was clean. My only concerns were with anything such as shopping/parcels that came in from outside, but that was relatively easy to deal with. My cat is also an indoors cat so I had far fewer worries about coronavirus coming inside my house than an awful lot of other people may have.

Recently the inevitable happened, I had to let a plumber in. I did ask if he had precautions in place and he said yes. In retrospect I should have asked far more specific questions and requested that he use sanitiser just before coming into my house.

He arrived wearing a mask that to be honest looked like it had seen far better days, but at least he had one on and there was no sign of hand sanitiser being used. Whilst I was in the kitchen (at a distance) explaining the problem I could barely concentrate on what I was saying as he kept resting his hands all over countertops etc and I kept trying to remember where he'd been so I could clean it when he'd left.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful that tradespeople are still coming out to sort jobs for us, but the pandemic has turned me from a very hygienic person into a raving hygiene lunatic. When he'd left I retraced all his routes and wiped literally anything he might conceivably have touched and even then I was still worried that I’d missed something.

Prior to this, I thought I would get some non essential work done i.e. odd jobs, but I've definitely changed my mind, they can wait, if only for the sake of my sanity. If I have any other emergency jobs I will explain that I need extreme precautions taking, will ask them only to touch anything that they absolutely need to and will explain why I’m at extra risk.

I thought I was careful before covid19, but it’s made me realise how often I touch my face, how I need to wash my hands for longer and how I have to stop doing little things like licking my fingers before opening a bag etc. On the plus side, I’m hoping I might get far fewer colds due to my new hygiene precautions, which I’m definitely going to retain even after this has all passed.

I have no idea how anyone else with large families and particularly those with partners that go to work every day and children at school have coped. I would have been driven insane, I really don’t think I could have coped so you have my absolute admiration for dealing with it all.

Angie Davidson

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