Do I dare tell him he is doing the washing-up all wrong?

Everything has changed, except for the things that haven’t, and the collision of old and new reality is producing all sorts of unexpected challenges. When the lockdown was first announced, my partner, R, and I felt fairly calm about the prospect, reflecting that we have been in inadvertent training for just such an outlandish event for some time. I have been working from home for decades, and a few years ago R also set up an office in our livingroom. Since then we have become adept at sharing the space in a moderately sized apartment; but the intensity of this new confinement has turned an exposing spotlight on differences that once seemed trivial, or of which we were only dimly aware.

A couple of weeks ago, our dishwasher broke down: a very minor problem, or so it seemed. I grew up in a household with an austere minimum of labour-saving appliances – just an unwieldy upright vacuum cleaner and an ancient twintub washing machine – so analogue washing-up holds no terrors for me. R gamely volunteered to take his turn at the sink – at which point the first cracks in our domestic unity began to appear.

While I follow the dishwashing protocols I learnt at my mother’s knee – glasses first, then cutlery, then china, then saucepans, with a good deal of pre- and post-wash rinsing – R approaches the task in a style that presumably evolved during his student years. He heaves everything into the sink at the same time, swilling plates and frying pans indiscriminately in a liquid that gradually comes to resemble a nourishing soup, with odd bits of whatever we had for dinner floating in a murky greyish emulsion. If the virus doesn’t get us, I reflect, botulism probably will. But I’m reluctant to undermine the admirable principle of houseworksharing, so the thought remains, for now, unspoken.

Along with the practical issues, a sharp divergence in our philosophical approach to viral jeopardy has emerged. R is an anxious optimist; I am a gloomy fatalist. We discovered this early on, and over the years his channelling of Fotherington-thomas and mine of Mrs Gummidge have become a comic leitmotif of our relationship. But the longer we remain indoors, the more marked our traits become. While I’m reading Dostoevsky and watching Frances Mcdormand (brilliant but bitter as wormwood) in the miniseries Olive Kitteridge, R longs for feelgood entertainment and has found it in the form of Heartland, a Canadian drama series set on a horse ranch.

Generous intentions lay behind his choice: he knew I was missing my own mare, stabled some 50 miles from where we live, and thought some horse-themed entertainment might help. Alas, the rickety acting and perfunctory plot lines (troubled nag arrives at the ranch with intractable behavioural problems. Teenage heroine effects a magical cure. The End. Repeat ad nauseam) bring to mind an equine version of Crossroads. I loathe it as fervently as R dotes on it.

There are 13 seasons of this ineffable tosh – enough to sustain R’s mental equilibrium for the duration, while mine inexorably unravels.

If we survive until the lockdown ends, I imagine him emerging, blinking, into vast, unaccustomed expanses of freedom, while I remain incarcerated in the spare room, gibbering like the first Mrs Rochester, wits permanently addled by a surfeit of feelgood telly.