THE CLOONEYS

You know, I was hoping we’d be spending Christmas in the cute new Berkshire place, but it isn’t ready yet. You know Amal: she’s not materialistic. I have never met a woman with more simple tastes. So there’s only going to be a home cinema, a tennis court, a gym, a library, a cellar, a steam room, a pergola, a boat house, a pool house, a swimming pool, a barbed wire boundary fence and 5,788 CCTV cameras. Amal has been projectmanaging it all in between defending former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed and trying to stop the Syrian conflict. She’s really good at grouting.

On Christmas Day, Cindy and Rande might call round, and the girls will watch a movie — something light like Twelve Years a Slave — while me and Rande get down to some serious Casamigos drinking. Foodwise, I’d settle for the basics: turkey, pigs in blankets, Aunt Bessie’s roast potatoes, a delicious cup of Nespresso. But that’s not going to happen. Amal has been taking night classes in molecular gastronomy and is planning to serve up the world’s first biodynamically farmed, organic, levitating turkey — made entirely of foam, so as not to infringe its basic avian rights. The challenge will be to get her to stop working long enough to eat it. She is an amazing human being — funny, caring, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But it’s hard to feel festive when she has Putin on speakerphone, Kofi on email and Assange WhatsApping away like crazy. Like everything in our lives, our presents will be low-key. I’d be happy with another Nespresso machine, but Amal has expressed concern over the biodegradability of the pods. Right after she’s met with Abdullah Abdullah, she’ll be conducting a feasibility study on whether the coffee can be scooped out and transformed into malaria tablets for children in Third World countries.

Sure, she loves clothes. That isn’t frivolous. It’s sort of fascinating to watch Amal’s taste evolve. I have never met any woman who is better at multitasking. She’ll be teaching at Columbia and ordering a ball gown off Net-a-porter at the same time. I like to encourage her femininity but in a feminist way, because I am a feminist. So I’ll buy her some new lingerie and maybe a red Stella McCartney dress, but nothing too crazy. She’s been upset recently about her engagement ring — it was only £450,000, but she worries it’s distracting her customers at Nando’s where she does a quick shift before catching the bus to her Doughty Street Chambers. So now we have to have a vault built in the new place. I said, ‘Honey, let me get you a simple gold band from a friend of mine in the Congo.’ No. She told me that gold mining is environmentally destructive, creates toxic waste, ravages landscapes, pollutes rivers and destroys forests. But I’ve found the perfect gift. I got my people to source these marbles from a little place called Elgin. She’s gonna love them. ES