2 1GT Wednesday August 5 2020 | the times

times

A

middle-class lifestyle

could soon be yours

to rent courtesy of

John Lewis. The

company may start

to loan out white

goods and, say,

scatter-back sofas in

teal velvet, an excellent idea that could

save many people from social death.

I, for instance, have never recovered

from when friends came to stay from

London and complained that my

toaster didn’t have a bagel setting. You

never quite get over something like

that. If I had rented a less humiliating

toaster for the weekend, perhaps even

with a slide-out crumb tray for easy

cleaning instead of holding it upside

down and shaking it, I wouldn’t have

felt like such an Argos pleb.

But what’s done is done. There was

another near-miss when I left my

radio tuned to Absolute 80s and

changed it to Radio 4’s You and Yours

only just in time. I wondered whether

I even deserved to live that day.

So it’s a blessing to learn that John

Lewis, whose stores (which I love)

are shining emporiums of aesthetic

living, is considering loaning out its

products like Radio Rentals. For a

much smaller fee, however (shall we

say paying my Ocado smartpass?),

I can offer many tips on how to pull

off being middle-class without the faff

of hiring an Etienne sleigh bed or

a Smeg fridge while hiding your

crappy Indesit behind a curtain

(Cath Kidston, ideally).

It’s not as simple as keeping a

healthy supply of fresh basil,

instagramming your sourdough and

resenting your cleaner for sloping off

ten minutes early (but the buses are

quite regular. AIBU?). It’s knowing

what’s a deal-breaker.

If your child goes to a friend’s for tea

(sorry, “play date”) and later reveals

that they ate white bread you must

not, for example, shrug and think: “Oh

well, once won’t matter.” No. You must

have a full neurotic meltdown, phone

the mother and explain that your

child doesn’t eat white bread due to

“allergies”, which you may or may not

have invented.

Obviously you mustn’t be seen dead

in any pub that does not offer wasabi

peas, sharing boards and a selection

of craft beers with quirky names. If

The point

of breasts

explained

One in six mothers say

they’ve received sexual

attention from men

while breastfeeding in

public, ranging from

outright leering to

being told that “breasts

are designed for

male pleasure”.

The Republican

politician Josh Moore

once suggested that if

a woman breastfed in

public a man should

be allowed to grab her

nipple (way to go,

Josh!). Odd how you

never see male cats

crowding around a

she-cat feeding kittens,

sniggering: “Phwoar,

can I hop on next?”

David Attenborough

has yet to film an

indignant wildebeest

approaching a mother

zebra suckling her

young and saying:

“Look we’ve brought

our kids for a nice day

out here, Sandra. FFS

put your tits away.”

But then the human

is the only mammal to

remain teat-fixated

post-weaning. Some

believe that breasts

evolved to mimic the

shape of buttocks to

redirect male attention

from the back of a

woman to her front.

Whatever the

reason, we’re left with

Bugs Bunny’s rabbit

girlfriend Lola in a bra.

Worse, in Howard the

Duck a duck lady in the

bath had generous

woman-knockers with

nipples, which, truly, is

weird shit. All I can say

is don’t google it.

Rishi’s title

goes down

badly

from some, who point

out that it is slightly

contradictory to give

the nation cut-price Big

Macs amid a national

anti-obesity drive.

Worse, it has

spawned yet another

torrent of puerile

double entendres

over the scheme’s

unfortunate title.

Are we in for a

whole month of

“What cunning linguist

thought that up?” Or

“That hasn’t gone down

well”? Aren’t we better

than this? Of course

we’re not!

Hence the memes

flooding Twitter. It

genuinely is hard to see

how this got signed off,

yet politicians are

famously unworldly

wise. In the 1980s

Norman Fowler, then

the health secretary

dealing with the Aids

crisis, asked to have

the term “oral sex”

explained. When it

was, he is said to have

replied: “Crikey.”

Crikey, indeed.

Poor Rishi Sunak. The

launch of his “Eat out

to help out” scheme has

prompted mockery

you spot a karaoke machine or a large

TV showing darts, leave immediately

without looking back. There’s nothing

for you here. Even if you have spouted

lefty views in the past, do put your

kids in private school when it suits.

As a tub-thumping acquaintance once

said after doing exactly this: “It wasn’t

fair to sacrifice her future for my

principles.” Outstanding!

I admit I do often find myself

slacking. Sometimes I forget to make

“nom nom” sex noises and ask for the

recipe when someone offers me a very

average bit of lemon drizzle cake or

demand to know the provenance of an

aubergine in a restaurant. I once

drank Blossom Hill wine and it slipped

down fine, but please don’t tell anyone.

Obviously if there are to be Class A

drugs at your dinner party, even

though you bang on about giving to

Amnesty and buying Fairtrade coffee,

do take care to ensure it is “woke

coke”, ie cocaine that some dealers

say is “ethically sourced” and “conflict

free” and has definitely not been

rammed up the anus of a teenage

boy held at machete-point.

It’s a full-time job, knowing the “do’s

and don’ts”, but a sensible knitwear

from the Boden catalogue should see

you through any sticky moments. And

do memorise a few lines from the

“Overheard in Waitrose” Facebook

page for that final middle-class

flourish. Saying: “No marinated

artichokes? It’s like East Berlin in

here!” will never let you down.

Carol Midgley

How to be middle-class

— yes, your toaster does

need a bagel setting

I called off my

Katie Glass was engaged and trying for

a baby when Covid hit. But the months

of confinement made her realise her

relationship was not what it seemed...

I

n the days before lockdown, as

Covid cases grew, people

panicked, travel was cancelled

and events were called off, my

fiancé turned to me and said:

“Let’s just do it. Let’s get

married.” In that moment

nothing felt more right.

We had spent 18 months worrying

about our wedding. We had

procrastinated endlessly, fantasising

over a million grand plans for wildly

different events. We had pictured a

wedding in Vegas, a church in

Derbyshire, a handfasting in a

Somerset apple orchard. We had

imagined saying our vows on a beach

in Thailand or under a Welsh waterfall

with our dog as a ring-bearer, then

jumping into our VW van. We had got

drunk dreaming up impossibly perfect

nuptials that encapsulated everything

we were together; lavish but casual,

old-fashioned but weird, party animals

who craved intimacy. We had pictured

just us — with 3,000 guests. Then we

had woken up with hangovers and

deadlines, worrying about money, and

done nothing.

The pandemic, which suspended

weddings altogether, offered us a

solution. We decided we should have

a shotgun Zoom wedding. Luckily, it

never took place. Barely months later

we had separated.

It seems that this kind of

monochromatic experience was not

limited to us. A survey by the

relationship charity Relate suggests

a split picture of the impact that

lockdown has had on love. During

lockdown 61 per cent of people have

realised how important their

relationship is, with 10 per cent saying

that they plan to propose. By contrast,

8 per cent of people left lockdown

knowing their relationship was over.

I am one of them.

Maybe I’m lucky I didn’t wed.

According to one legal firm, divorce

inquiries have increased by more than

40 per cent during lockdown.

In the early days of lockdown, as we

fantasised about getting married, my

fiancé and I settled into an illusion of

wedded bliss. In the first week we

created a parody marriage, like the

kind you see in romantic films. In the

mornings, with neither of us rushing

to work, we snuggled in bed with the

dog, making coffee for each other in

turn. We sat down to work together,

playing footsie under our shared desk,

skiving off for long lunches and longer

dog walks. With meetings and work

trips absent from our calendars, we

found time for each other that we

didn’t usually have. We had dinner

together, drinking wine outside,

looking at the stars. For that short

time we slotted together like a jigsaw.

It didn’t last.

At first I relished being at home with

him. With all the extra hours in my

day, I amused myself by playing at

being a housewife because playing is

fun. I bought a vacuum cleaner and

turned cleaning into a hobby, dusting

down bookcases. I googled recipes

for bread, bought yeast from Amazon

and began baking aggressively. I

organised food deliveries and made

dinner by playing Ready Steady Cook

with the cupboards.

It didn’t take long for the novelty

of behaving like a 1950s housewife

to wear off. Who knew? After a week

of shimmying around in lipstick

pretending to be a domestic goddess,

I got over the thrill of fighting for a

supermarket delivery slot and

wondered when my fiancé would help.

My simmering suspicions that

he would assume the housework

was my job began to ferment like

the yeast from my failed bread. I

saw our next 60 years together.

And began panicking.

As I became Mad Men’s Betty

Draper — heading for a breakdown

via house management — my fiancé

became increasingly like Don Draper.

(I later remembered that Betty left

Don.) He found working from home

frustrating. While I, as a freelance

journalist, was used to how haphazard

working at home is — having my day

interrupted by people wanting to chat

or the dog trying to attack the

postman — my fiancé struggled to

cope out of an office environment. He

became short-tempered and snappy

about the noise in the house and not

having enough space to himself.

I am a woman; I tried to

accommodate him. I tried working in

bed, not speaking to him from 9am to

5pm (surely that’s weird) and taking

the dog for longer and longer walks

alone. I tried giving him so much

space that I realised my own was

shrinking. I started writing in the

VW van.

As lockdown went on, we came

under more stress. We have families

who are vulnerable and we worried

about which of them we could help.

As our businesses struggled and we

began losing work we worried about

paying our bills and rent. As a former

doctor he faced being called back on

to the wards and struggled to decide if

he should go, while I worried what

would happen if he did.

I had always imagined that under

this kind of pressure we would grow

closer; I had bought headlong into

that romantic cliché of the two of us

against the world. Instead, the

opposite was true. We cracked. Our

intimacy imploded. We turned on

I had bought

into the cliché

of the two of us

against the world

T

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