Being forced to switch off can lead to more problems than it solves

THE accountant stood at the kitchen sink, clearly trying to find something among the nuts, bolts, screws, box-cutters, tabloid newspapers, cigarette packages and rolled glue-tubes testifying to the work being done on the house.

“You didn’t want soap, did you?” I asked.

She assured me that washing hands was always good. I asked her what she’d actually been looking for when I had helpfully misdirected her efforts and made her hands so clean she could have done surgery on the cat without transferring the smallest bacterium to it.