The Sunday Times - UK (2022-02-06)

The Sunday Times February 6, 2022 2GN 25

COMMENT

A nightmare comes

true in the ladies’ loo

Navigating modern life

certainly can be tricky

beyond just vaccine wars

and dying batteries.

I have three recurring

nightmares that I’ve

desperately tried to avoid

coming true: missing a

crucial exam through

oversleeping, accidentally

going to work naked and

unintentionally using the

ladies’ loo.

In the end political

correctness was my

downfall. I was at the Young

Vic theatre in London,

which has large signs on the

lavatory doors saying that

people of all genders are

welcome there.

Relishing the chance to

prove myself an enlightened

21st-century citizen, I duly

charged through the nearest

door.

Always read the small

print, though. Because,

although the loos are

theoretically ungendered,

there’s a little sign on one

door indicating it has

urinals, and no such sign on

the other.

Everyone else got the

memo. And so, as a very

obviously cisgender bloke

taking a loud, blokey

wee, I received dreaded

giggles and looks of alarm

from the group of young

women queuing to use my

cubicle. My nightmare had

finally become reality.

But we also have to accept

the vaccine’s limitations. If

the whole world were jabbed

tomorrow, Covid would

continue to spread. In Britain

jabs have long been freely

available, so the main threat

that the unvaccinated now

pose is to themselves.

Perhaps we might start to

look at them more like heavy

smokers or alcoholics —

people making bad health

decisions that have an

impact on all of us, but whose

liberty to make those

decisions without undue

sanction are part of the price

we pay for living in a free

society.

A few days in Puerto Rico was

my first experience of life

under a proper vaccine

mandate. You can’t go into a

restaurant there without

showing proof of a Covid jab

— in my case a flimsy slip of

paper from a defunct

Washington immunisation

clinic. It’s a strange way to

live.

It’s also rather out of date,

our fixation with shaming

and depriving people who are

unvaccinated.

We now live in a world

where the virus breaks

through our vaccination wall

with abandon. The latest

Omicron variant troubling

scientists seems even more

transmissible than the last, so

vaccination won’t stop you

getting it and it won’t stop

you passing it on, though

studies show it makes both

somewhat less likely.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s

profoundly reckless not to

have your shots, because

vaccines obviously save lives.

It’s scientifically illiterate and

also selfish, because the

unvaccinated are straining

our already overburdened

health services, which we all

pay for. Those who spread

damaging lies about

immunisation deserve our

unmitigated scorn.

Drinking, smoking, jab-dodging —

all the fun of living in a free country

lVisiting America also

meant being thrillingly

reunited with my wallet,

which I left in Miami in

December. In the

meantime, I have been

forced finally to master the

art of using Apple Pay,

which is kind of addictive

when you get used to it.

Yet, just as with every

other modern convenience

— EarPods, Bluetooth

speakers, digital doorbells —

the apparently unintended

consequence is to heighten

massively our already acute

battery anxiety.

Not only do I now need

my phone to communicate,

order taxis, read the news

and exist, but now I can’t

pay for anything without it

either.

Battery life has become

like oxygen. I seem to spend

half my day worrying about

the charge level on my

superannuated iPhone,

looking for power outlets

and thinking about where I

can get my next charge. I

imagine this is something

like what being a heroin

addict feels like.

The other day my phone

fully gave out at a

restaurant, and I had to

write a plaintive IOU,

promising I’d return the

next day to pay my £14 bill. I

was lucky not to end up

washing the dishes.

Josh Glancy

Week ending

Wheelers

and dealers

I always enjoy reader

feedback, particularly when

it pertains to the dark

underbelly of the North

Yorkshire taxi industry. Last

month I wrote about a

driver’s errant cocaine-

dealing son, prompting a

Yorkshire reader to write in:

“I had a driver recently who

in the pandemic had been

paid £700 to drive a woman

to Cornwall so she could have

an affair with her best

friend’s husband. He was

tipped with a McDonald’s and

drove straight home again.

True story.”

If I ever write a novel, I

think I’ll research it by taking

cabs up and down the A64.

What’s in the water up there?

NEWMAN’S

VIEW

Fragile Harry’s incontinent woo-woo is sweet

revenge on the frigid family he left behind

Camilla Long

R

ishi Sunak and I have one thing

in common: we both enjoy a

ride on the Peloton. No doubt

Sunak likes it because of the

slow technical burn of a (quite

tedious) power zone ride —

possibly to the sounds of Clean

Bandit — but I like it because of

the extreme tide of hilarious

motivational garbage that pours out of

the instructors’ mouths.

To say it is hysterical woo-woo is to

understate the sheer frothing cataract of

feelings-obsessed twottery that fills the

audio.

Every time I get on the bike there is

someone telling me I need to be strong

or live my own life or own my ass or

polish my mofo-ing crown ’cos I am a

kween. “Or a king,” one of them will

correct themselves. “Or non-binary

royalty,” they will add. Nothing negative

or bad can ever be admitted.

I see from his latest video that Prince

Harry, living in California, is now fluent

in Peloton, or at least some kind of Yoga-

with-Adrienne-style “mental toolbox”

iterative blah. Speaking from beneath a

sprig of newly farmed carrot hair with a

panel of sculpted execs, the prince

explained in an interview on Thursday

for his wellness app how he dealt with

the extreme mental burden of living in a

$14 million mansion with 16 loos.

Every day he strives for “mental

fitness”. He will try to find a “slate of

white space” after the school run. “I now

put in half an hour or 45 minutes in the

morning when one of the kids has gone

to school and the other is taking a nap,”

he said.

To which any parent of young

children will inevitably shout: 45 whole

minutes? Who has more than four? The

only “white space” I ever experience is

when I lock myself in the bathroom.

How does he think it looks to claim he

has suffered from “burnout” when the

most stressful thing he now experiences

is probably the occasional subpar

morning affirmation and not-quite-right

American-style grass? Burnout from

what, anyway? From taking four private

jets a week? From his wife? Everything

he says assumes poor mental health is

the default, which is, in itself, mad.

I wonder what the Kween herself is

thinking as she watches Harry’s latest

attempt to dress up navel-gazing as

“boldly committing to inner work”.

Today is the beginning of her Platinum

Jubilee — or, as one run of souvenir

crockery hilariously misspelt it, her

“Platinum Jubbly”.

As a woman who specialises in

sincere, short and savagely to-the-point

haikus — “recollections may vary” — she

must look at Harry with his sprawling,

meaningless bromides and wonder what

has gone wrong in the past 70 years.

It is true that in every aristocratic

family there is one Harry: a member

laughed at as “emotional”. A friend

always used to tell me how her father, a

distant relative of Winston Churchill,

would often weep at the dinner table,

sobbing about how much he loved his

children, while they rolled their eyes.

Churchill famously wept at everything —

funerals, processions, songs, films, even

comedies.

The Queen has chosen the opposite

path: one of stony inscrutability and few

words. She has famously only ever cried

over one thing — a boat. Charles, flowery

in comparison, once described his

mother as “not indifferent so much as

detached”. Then again, trolling around

big houses waiting for someone to die,

which is all most toffs do, must mess

with your wiring.

Is Prince Harry simply what happens

after years and years of not letting

feelings out and being sent away to

school? If you spend your life ignoring

your children — the Queen comes from a

generation of parents who thought it

was perfectly all right simply to shake

hands with their offspring — I suppose it

should come as no surprise when those

children and their children try to attract

your attention by telling people they feel

they are being “schooled by the

universe” and use words like

“programme” instead of “routine”.

Harry claims he is now so mentally

fragile that he needs to surround himself

with “people who I would happily have

washing the [mental] windscreen”.

Charles, of course, calls such people

“valets”. I find it interesting that nearly

everything Harry speaks about involves

not what he can do for others but what

others can do for him.

He cites a constant stream of helpers

you can drag in to solve your problems:

You may have caught a few

of the disgraceful text

messages sent between Met

police officers at Charing

Cross station. Some of them

were so racist and sexist, you

read them and just thought:

what on earth is happening

in people’s heads?

One told a colleague he

would like to rape her.

Another said he would

chloroform a female

colleague “if I was single”. A

further message claimed

“daft” women are murdered

There is a certain type of man

who will eat almost anything

— kebabs, dirt, entrails,

roasted squirrel, things from

under his fingernails or stuff

off the floor. My father, in the

occasional absent moment,

has been known to drink cold

coffee and eat frozen

Brussels sprouts straight

from the packet.

The trophy for mindless

scoffing must, however, go

to a group of bored postmen

in Clapham who wolfed the

contents of a month-old

parcel that had been sent to

an empty house.

“Today almost all the

posties in Clapham

accidentally ate hash

brownies,” whooped a

caption on a video of the

men staggering around in

the street. “I had to pick them

up one by one because they

were so high.”

One of the postmen was

shown slurring and

struggling to push a trolley.

Another “said he was walking

to a door and thought he was

walking for ever”. Someone

claimed he had eaten as

many as four of the cakes.

You look at the pictures and

think: accident, my foot.

The extraordinary thing is

that anyone should want to

eat anything that had been in

a parcel for a month, whether

exciting “specialist” edibles

or not. They must have tasted

like mummified pharaoh’s

crotch. On the other hand, a

month isn’t very long to wait

before illegally opening a

parcel — what else are

postmen gaily truffling into?

because they are

“biologically programmed”

to like being hit.

The Met is now facing a

watershed moment. What I

want to know is: will it prove

it is seriously committed to

tackling misogyny at all

levels? Or will it use the texts

as a diversionary tactic to rat

on the ill-educated, racist,

sexist, working-class

constables and glide over

the fact there are more

senior staff doing the

harassing as well?

Don’t let Met chiefs use

those awful texts as a decoy

The postman

has snaffled

your special

delivery

Trolling

round big

houses

waiting for

someone to

die must

mess with

your wiring

Prince Harry, who works for a life-coaching firm called BetterUp, said he had suffered from ‘burnout’ and the cure was ‘inner work’

friends, family, even “complete

strangers”, which is weird. It isn’t just

employees, he says, who are ultimately

responsible for their own mental health,

but employers, who should “factor”,

say, people’s meditation journeys “into

their routine at work”. There speaks a

man raised by nannies.

It is easy to criticise the Queen’s stuffy

approach and her habit of retreating into

formalities and protocol. But if I had to

choose, I’d take her reserve and mystery

any day over Harry banally telling me:

“Every single bad thing — or the things

you perceive to be bad — that happens

can actually be good.”

Does he believe that? Doesn’t

pretending things are fine when they’re

not cause poor mental health? Isn’t

insisting everyone be intensely positive

actually a form of the stiff upper lip?

THE MEGA AGENCY