Love in the time of coronavirus

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THE PRESSURE can get to you when you’ve spent more time with your husband in the past month than you have in the past 30 years. If one of us says something particularly tiresome, the other sighs heavily, mutters: “Six more months” and mimes pressing a revolver to one’s temple. To quote that catchphrase from the BBC wartime radio show ITMA – it’s being so cheerful that keeps us going.

YOU HAVE to admire people who, in a time of crisis, think outside the box. Faced with the recent shortage of pasta on the supermarket shelves my inclination would have been to give up. Though I’m fairly certain that if I excavated the back of my kitchen cupboard there’d be a dusty packet of fusilli, best before September 2014.

But I would never, ever, have considered extending my pasta quest to Ann Summers, the well-known sex accessories emporium.

Yet in this time of severe economic downturn it’s good to report that Ann Summers has sold more of its penis-shaped pasta in the past week than in the whole of 2019.

That’s online sales of course. Browsing the rails for spiked collars, furry handcuffs and sex toys along with a packet of fetishini to have with your dough balls is out of the question for the moment because the outlets, like all shops, are closed. At least, until such time as someone can successfully argue that items from Madam Storm’s Kinky Collection are an essential purchase.

A cheery phallus wearing a chef’s hat (they missed a trick by not calling him Al Dente) appears on the box, which naughtily warns that the pasta “increases in size when cooked”, the sort of useful information that you never get with a bag of Tesco’s macaroni.

Purchases are limited to one box per customer and you can buy a wild garlic pesto sauce produced by chef Aldo Zilli. Delicious with a sprinkle of parmesan… but careful with the grater.and mind where you put the pepper grinder.

Well, we must all take our pleasure where we can at this difficult moment for casual sex when maintaining a distance of two metres has dealt a severe blow to the swingers’ industry or anyone’s chances of hooking up, copping off or having a fling.

And even those under house arrest and in stable relationships may not, in truth, be going at it like knives. Listening to More Or

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Less – Radio 4’s wonderful programme on statistics – I learnt that all those stories about birthrate booms after times of emergency are mostly rubbish.

As for orgies? In your dreams. The last event hosted by Killing Kittens, a highly successful female-friendly sex party company, took place in Venice in February. In those innocent times Personal Protective Equipment meant bowls of condoms and masks had sequins and feathers. Now, like so many other businesses, Killing Kittens has gone virtual with online parties. It’s what’s known as making the best of things.

Meanwhile in Verona, setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, romance has blossomed between Michele D’alpaos, 38, and Paola Agnelli, 39, who spotted each other from their respective balconies on opposite sides of the street. They now talk on the phone and look longingly at each other across the divide. “Our relationship is magic and we can wait,” says Michele.

Love in the time of coronavirus.

SO LONG Honor Blackman, who has died aged 94. Anyone who has black leather in their wardrobe owes her Avengers character Cathy Gale a debt of gratitude. As a little girl I very much wanted to kick ass as she did. One of the wonderful things about her was that she never looked like a tremulous ingénue. She always looked like she could take care of herself. In Goldfinger she was a Bond woman rather than a Bond girl. And then that scene... “Who are you?” says 007, regaining consciousness to this vision of loveliness. “My name is Pussy Galore,” says Honor Blackman, making it sound both cool and classy. A faint smile passes across Sean Connery’s face. “I must be dreaming.”