Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Tackling the housework has made my boys shine!
WELL, here we all are… at home. Not for the weekend or an evening, but most of the day, every day. The happy news is that − touch wood − none of us in my home are so far unwell. The bad news is that we have had to adjust to the unfamiliar situation of being entirely responsible for all the domestic chores.
Of course, I appreciate how incredibly fortunate we are to have been able to rely on a brilliant weekly cleaner and the local dry cleaner for years. We’ve told the cleaner she must stay safe at home and we will pay her as normal. And the dry cleaner has shut down.
But it means that my blessed escape from scrubbing the kitchen floor and deep-cleaning the shower tray is over. As is my freedom from ironing the shirts.
So housekeeping − and most specifically who is going to do what − has become a major point of, shall we call it ‘debate’, round these parts.
Given that we are all working in our own ways from home, this obviously should be an even playing field. And, in theory, my partner David and my grown-up son agree we should split the chores.
That is until it comes to making any kind of plan that we can stick to. I suspect we are all equally guilty of only wanting to do what we want to do when we want to do it.
I am happy to do some light i roning while l i stening to my Spotify playlist with the spring sunshine streaming through the kitchen windows, but less inclined to clean the loo. My son, who is the most immaculately tidy of us, has volunteered to be Mr Hinch but is balking at being told what to do by me.
And David, dear David, has said that of course he’s happy to do his bit, but where exactly do we keep the kitchen surface cleaner? And what’s he meant to do with it?
He is not alone. Last night I spoke to a male friend currently living alone in Monaco as his partner tends to her elderly parents in another country.
He is being taught how to cook (something he has never hitherto attempted) by his daughter on FaceTime, but was flummoxed when he dropped his dinner all over the oven – because he didn’t know how to clean it afterwards.
He doesn’t even know what oven cleaner is in French. Talk about a First World problem…
But back here in North London there are early signs that we might surprise ourselves. Although I discovered David attempting his shirts with a cold iron yesterday, he has proved to be a dab hand at cleaning the hob.
My son has spent hours discovering bits of mould in places I wouldn’t even have looked and scrubbing away at them.
And I have found a new satisfaction in sorting the washing. We can’t control much of what is going on out there but a kind of salvation can be found in creating small order amid big chaos.
Everyone’s going wild in the country
THE crisis has seen everyone who is able to leave the capital for the countryside. Those fortunate few with second homes have legged it to Wiltshire, Cornwall, Devon, Norfolk. Anywhere really, that they can escape the London streets where we are all weaving around each other like strange shoals of fish as we try to keep our 6ft distance on the pavements, in the shops and in the parks.
Those country communities, though, aren’t thrilled ( to put it mildly) with the influx and the second- home owners who have been there a while are joining in with angry condemnation of those johnny- come- lately renters who have jumped in on the act for the Easter holidays. Nobody wants to be thought of as one of them.
Long-term second-homers have worked up all manner of different rationales as to why they, in particular, don’t qualify as nasty contaminators from the city. They, unlike the newbies, they point out, are welcomed by the local shopkeepers, with whom they are on first-name terms.
Bluebell Cottage is not their second home, for heaven’s sake, ‘it’s emotionally our first home’. It’s just that life gets in the way and they can’t spend as much time there as they’d wish. That kind of thing.
More seriously, the rancour being shown in some places is unpleasant and mostly undeserved.
When this is over we have all got to live together, and memory is long. We’ve already pulled up the drawbridge on the EU, let’s try not to do the same across county lines.
If only Trump could self-isolate for ever
WHO could ever have imagined the G20 summit taking place on Zoom? I’m hoping it might mean we won’t ever have to see Donald Trump in the flesh again.
The new black is... anything but black
THE grim days we are going through have put the kibosh on wearing black. We don’t need more dark.
Dressing in black hasn’t always been fashionable, but for at least a century the colour had been associated with sophistication and chic. Plus it’s reputed to not show the dirt and to make you look slimmer (neither of which is really true).
Black, though, is not a feelgood colour and right now even if we have only ourselves and maybe our nearest and dearest to stare at, feel-good is vital factor. Check out the Zoom conferences and Houseparty rendezvous − scarcely a black jersey to be spotted up there.
Meet the Queen of telephone fashion
ONE of the upsides of the virus is the renaissance of the telephone call. It’s so much more satisfactory than emoji-laden texts.
I loved the picture of the Queen and Prime Minister holding the receivers to their ears in their weekly meeting but in particular that they were on wired landlines.
The Queen’s old-fashioned white phone is heavenly and I bet that when t his i s all over, a l arge number of us will be swapping our wireless sets (often with a really dodgy signal) for an elegant retro number, just like hers.
Remember Harry and Meg? Me neither
LEARNING that Harry and Meghan had jetted out of Canada to make their home in LA, my immediate thought was how, in this dr a matically changed world, where they go, what they do, is now utterly irrelevant.
Would it have been different if they had remained at Frogmore? I suspect so.