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'I suffer from the ladyshakes'

Anna Pickard has never mastered the art of the handshake - possibly because she can't help offering her hand like a minor royal

Thursday March 24, 2005
The Guardian

The air in the meeting room froze. I stood in the doorway clasping my interviewer's hand in a manner that suggested not confidence or professionalism, but an arranged marriage to the Prince of Denmark and an in-depth knowledge of polo. My shakee stared at our clasped hands with the kind of ice-cold glare I thought Condoleezza Rice had bought the rights to. Slowly, I withdrew my hand, lifting it out of the proffered palm. The meeting did not go well; I blame the ladyshake.

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As a young woman, there are several handshakes that seem proper. These range from dry and decisive to warm and hard. Wet is always frowned upon, regardless of gender or situation. A tenuous and trembling grasp is allowable. But for some reason it simply is not the done thing to give the ladyshake - a slip of the hand over the top of the palm as if expecting it to be kissed.

I suffer from the ladyshakes. While I have tried to correct it, I cannot help myself from presenting my hand as a trophy to be kissed. It is a nailbitten little ink-stained trophy, but I seem to expect the kissing all the same. I am not ladylike in any other way - but when it comes to formal greeting, my fingers inexplicably leave a blank, kiss-hungry canvas facing the conventional shaker.

It is my handgrab of choice, but I have no idea where I got it from. I have never even met the Pope, so I can't have copied it from him. The only finishing I did at school was finishing school (at 3.30pm every day except Wednesdays). Nothing in my history would have foreseen it, but somewhere along the line I have picked up the greeting habits of a minor royal. I know it's wrong, but how can I change it now? Are there shaking classes? Can I hire a handguiding coach?

It has got to the point where I become so nervous about ladyshaking that I overcompensate, and end up giving a soggy mis-shake or veering off and grabbing something that is usually best left untouched on first meeting. It is only a matter of time before I retreat into refusing to meet people at all.

There is an alternative, though - eschew the handshake altogether, embrace Europe with both hands and move straight to the kissing. If only it were that simple. Once you are into kissing, the potential for disaster is clear. Whose etiquette do you choose? Is it one kiss or two? Is it even - following some traditions - three? And how do you know which way to go?

I have never managed to develop the knack of Not Being Extremely British, no matter how hard I try, and consequently have no idea in which direction to go first. That is if I can work up the courage to kiss at all. Is there a rule? Because if there is, how is it that I have ended up kissing so many vague associates in such an uncomfortably intimate way?

A straw poll says that it is one kiss in Britain, but only with friends. It is two kisses in France - except in Brittany where it may be three, or Paris, where it may well be four. That's unless it is only an acquaintance, when it is back to two - unless they start to go for a third, in which case it is four again. Maybe I should just avoid France.

I could concentrate my greeting activities in Spain or Austria (the word is that two will do), whereas in Belgium, it is between one and three, depending on the age difference - a method so resolutely convoluted that I would be likely to burst into tears before I got within a kilometre of the kiss-zone.

But there simply isn't room in the British psyche for anything more touchy-feely than a quick clutch of the palm. Maybe I need to adopt the handshake of the powerful - the Cup and Jiggle.

In this manoeuvre (popular with politicians, suits and vicars), one hand firmly clasps the elbow - disabling it from any attempted hugs or kisses and maintaining optimum body-distance - while the other grasps the target's hand purposely, gives it a quick pump and moves on. I really should adopt this greeting of authority: stride in, take the room in hand and confidently shake my English shame away. I'm a modern woman, and that is what's expected of me: and I bet Condoleezza doesn't ladyshake.