I’m no fan of your mashed potato... but Coco Pops and Game of Thrones are wonderful
Does D&G’s comeback mean woke’s on the wane?
LAST week, Bakhtiar Shoresh, an interpreter for The Mail on Sunday in Afghanistan, described his family’s heart-stopping escape from the Taliban when, with just hours to spare, they caught one of the last flights out of Kabul to England.
For the past ten days, they have been quarantining at a Heathrow hotel and today, as they prepare to begin a new life, they expect to hear news of where they will be relocated.
Here, in his diary, Bakhtiar describes his joy at seeing England for the first time, adjusting to life in a strange land – where he says even the cows are more relaxed than at home…
TUESDAY, AUG 24
WE arrive in Manchester early in the morning, exhausted but relieved – safe from the Taliban! More checks, paperwork and waiting, and three hours later our family group of nine – my wife and I, our four children and my three sisters – set off by coach on a three-hour journey to our temporary home, a Holiday Inn Express at Heathrow where we will quarantine for the next ten days.
From out of the coach window we get our first look at England. Until today, what little I have seen of this country has been in books and on the BBC television news.
Above all else, my clear impression is of a calm and peaceful land. Everywhere is so green. ‘Look at the cattle,’ says one of the children. Even the animals seem more relaxed. If only my homeland were gentle and free of tension. This, I reflect, is something to be cherished.
Despite the excitement, we all manage a little sleep. For security reasons, we are told that we will not stop en route. What security reasons, I wonder? Nobody can explain. Luckily there is a wash room and toilet on the coach.
Finally, after days of travelling, our journey is at an end. Our hotel is next to the airport. To me, Heathrow looks nothing like an airport. It is surely nothing like the one we left behind in Kabul. Where does it begin and end? I ask the driver: ‘Are you sure this is an airport? It looks like a city.’
After a wait of 30 minutes in the reception we are shown to our three rooms on the sixth floor – all very comfortable with televisions and bathrooms. My wife and I are with the youngest child, our boy Timor, aged two. Two of my sisters are with our four-year-old daughter and the other sister is with our eldest child, a boy of 14, and our 11-year-old daughter.
I post on Facebook that I am now in London. The Taliban will see it or hear about it and forget about me. Now we must sleep.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
WEDNESDAY, AUG 25
NONE of us realised just how strict the Covid rules would be.
This morning, I ventured out into the corridor to check on the rest of the family – only to be met by a security guard sitting outside who leapt up and told me to go back inside my room.
We can’t even mix with our own children yet none of us have this illness. For now, we must keep in touch on the room telephones. I find myself gazing out of the window for long periods. Planes take off and land every two minutes, and every so often I see figures moving in the distance.
After the deafening chaos of Kabul airport, it all seems so incredibly orderly.
THURSDAY, AUG 26
THE food is becoming a problem. I don’t want to be ungrateful but it is strange
to us. Mashed potatoes? And cauliflower? The vegetables here are boiled – why? Not fried like in my country. And so far there has been no meat.
Breakfast, though, brings Coco Pops, which the children think is wonderful. It would be good if they could have French fries or burgers and pizza, but I am told they are not on the menu.
Mostly it’s sandwiches of cold tuna or cheese, left outside the room and accompanied by a sharp knock on the door. Just like prison!
And then, just as we lament the awful food, there is news from home that puts everything into perspective. A suicide bombing has killed many, many people at Kabul airport.
Not for the first time, it occurs to me that we got out just in time.
We are the lucky ones, I tell myself, even though I can’t help feeling desperately sad to have left friends and relatives behind.
SATURDAY, AUG 28
MY SISTER calls from the room next door. My 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter are fighting.
Who can blame them? They’re jumping on the beds. ‘Just don’t let them break anything,’ I warn my sister. The kids haven’t forgiven me for making them leave their iPads and tablets behind in Kabul. We were told by the British Embassy to bring just two sets of clothes. Timor has some toy building blocks that someone in Manchester gave us.
I have become addicted to BBC News. With every bulletin comes sad news from home.
To take our minds off it, we are now watching something called Game Of Thrones.
SUNDAY, AUG 29
TIMOR is crying a lot, frustrated at being confined to a small room.
I let him run along the corridor outside but the security guards don’t like it and tell me to take him back in.
There has been one small victory, though. It turns out I have a cousin who lives just ten minutes away. He is bringing some traditional Afghan dishes – rice and beef with raisins – and, to my surprise, the hotel says this is permissible. My mouth waters at the prospect.
I speak to a good neighbour back in Kabul. We were worried that our house would be taken from us so he has agreed to stay in it, on the ground floor. The other two floors are packed with our belongings.
He says things are getting worse and worse in the city despite the Taliban’s assurances when they first arrived.
Girls aged 13 and older can no longer go to school. And young men are now routinely stopped in the street by Taliban officials and told not to shave their beards.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT 1
ALL our Covid tests were negative, and for the past few days we have been going outside two or three times a day for exercise. Seeing the children and my sisters again was fantastic.
We are allowed to walk around a car park. It is good to stretch our legs and be together again. Timor never wants to go back to the room. He just wants to play.
We’ve still got some of the food my cousin brought us. The hotel won’t heat it up for us but it still tastes marvellous.
More news from home: my neighbour has been trying to sell my Toyota 4x4 for me and had a buyer lined up. But the guy couldn’t get his money out of the bank because they aren’t doing any transactions at the moment. He said he could get it in a couple of weeks and asked if he could take the car for now, but I told my neighbour that wouldn’t be a good idea.
I hear from others of heavy fighting in the Panjshir Valley, 170 miles north of Kabul, where I am originally from.
This region has not yet fallen and has captured many Taliban fighters. In response, the Taliban is arresting and imprisoning people from Panjshir on the streets of Kabul to use in hostage swaps.
FRIDAY, SEPT 3
WE’VE heard nothing from the authorities about what will happen next – where we will live and such like.
Today, we passed another Covid test, which I think is a good sign.
On Sunday, our time in quarantine comes to an end. All of us have had enough and cannot wait to leave the hotel to begin a new life, to make new friends, to work and live in a community again.
YOU’D have to be head down in the Tora Bora mountains to have avoided the avalanche of Dolce & Gabbana publicity in recent weeks.
First was the total takeover of Kitty Spencer’s wedding when the bride wore countless D&G gowns throughout the day before honeymooning on the Amalfi Coast in a carousel of yet more of their frocks.
The combination of Princess Diana’s niece, a splendid Italian setting and thousands of pounds’ worth of clothes meant newspapers and websites were flooded with photos.
Then last week the duo held their annual Alta Moda (Italian for high fashion) show in Venice, ensuring any space not devoted to the downfall of Kabul or the doomed alpaca Geronimo was taken up by their riotously over-the-top couture. There was Helen Mirren, all twinkly-eyed and silverhaired, posing in a millefeuille of patterned silks in St Mark’s Square.
Next up, Jennifer Lopez emerging from a gondola in their exuberant trademark florals. And flooding guests’ Instagram feeds alongside the frocks came a display of Studio 54-style, buff boy dancers in tiny satin shorts at the post-show party.
These biannual extravaganzas are a highlight of the fashion season for the invited celebrities and press.
I’ve been lucky enough to have been on several of these no-expense spared weekends. One was on the island of Capri, where a cavalcade of boats dispatched ballgowned models on to a hidden cove turned catwalk, another in the resort town of Portofino where the couple turned their hilltop estate into an imagined Midsummer Night Dream and Kylie performed at a goldthemed disco. And then, a few years back, the razzmatazz took a swerve and it looked as if it was all going horribly wrong. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s supposed crimes read out in the courtroom of social media included a #DGLovesChina marketing video making fun of a Chinese model eating spaghetti with chopsticks, and Stefano’s critical comments on gay parenting and IVF.
Diet Prada, the Instagram account that acts as the fashion industry’s Stasi, piled in along with hordes of online commentators declaring that the couple – whose political incorrectness has never been in doubt – were on borrowed time.
Happily, since I’m a fan of the unashamedly unfiltered duo – think double-dose Piers Morgan – all now appears to be forgiven and forgotten. Sales figures are up, the brand is back on the red carpet. The recent Alta Moda was lauded as the joyful, excessive – but not exactly woke – display of superpricey fashion that it is.
Is this an example of how the flash fury so easily stoked by social media can be managed away with enough money flung at charitable donations and the clever use of brand ambassadors? Or is it – fingers crossed – the first green shoots of a more profound change in the air? A sign that the crazy cultural world of the moment where publishers, museum administrators, magazine and TV commissioning editors run scared of anything containing the vaguest possibility of offence to some constituency or other, is on the wane? Now wouldn’t that be something to celebrate…
Every family needs a Nanny Jannette
WHEN Fiona Bruce fessed up in a recent Radio Times interview to her reliance on her long-term nanny, she reopened the familiar quality v quantity time debate: are our children deprived if we delegate some of their care to a nanny?
I’ve never understood the prejudice against nannies if you’re a full-time working parent. Nor do I admire women, and it usually is women, who for some reason never admit to employing one, as if childcare was somehow magically achieved in their absence.
I’m endlessly grateful to the many young women who lived with us. They cheerfully cared for my son for the early years of his life, baking pirate-ship cakes and organising play dates, as I went off to earn our living.
Perhaps my relaxed attitude to employing a nanny was because of my own childhood. With two fulltime working parents, I and my siblings were looked after by nannies for years, who almost without exception took good care of us. Particularly my first, Nanny Jannette as she was known, who worked what would now be an inconceivable 24 hours a day, six days a week – she had Thursdays off.
As a consequence, Nanny Jannette was my world for my first five years. Our parents naturally were our great love but she was the day-to-day reality. She was there first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She was there for all the important moments, hearing our first words and witnessing our first steps. It’s not the children who are brought up with nannies who miss out. It’s the parents.
Wake up, Dominic – August isn’t sleepy
DOMINIC RAAB may well regret, with hindsight, his August holiday but the truth is that August is rarely a sleepy month. Holidays should really be taken in July, when nothing happens at all. In contrast, August events include the bombing of Hiroshima, the eruption of Krakatoa, the Tottenham riots and President Clinton admitting on television to an ‘improper’ relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Not by any means silly-season stuff.
From click to chic in just 45 minutes
LAST Sunday morning, after spotting it being recommended in Joanne Hegarty’s The Chic List column in You magazine, I ordered a skirt from Matches Fashion. com. To my delight and utter amazement, it was delivered to the front door in 45 minutes. Yes, 45 minutes from me clicking ‘add to basket’. Mind-blowing! This is, of course, a lethal discovery for the bank balance – immediate gratification being one of the greatest propulsions to purchase. Find clothing you like, buy it and wear it within the hour – it’s almost like shopping in real time in real stores used to be.
We’re going mad for Edna’s sad gladdies
THE incomparable Dame Edna’s devotion to gladioli has ensured that for years these sculptural spears have been viewed as the Haribos of flowers – bad taste and garish. But no longer. Gladdies now have a new fashionable status – knocking the dahlias off their perch as the cutting flower of choice in all the best vases. What next? Chrysanthemums?