The Show Must Go On

A month of lockdown easings has meant tough decisions for BoJo – the most difficult, I’m sure, being his resolution that the NHS should be rewarded for their last 72 years of service with a good old round of applause. The media revelled in the controversy caused by their dubbing of “Super Saturday”, yet restaurant-goers are indeed glad to be back, choosing from the menu drinks, nibbles, and the hospital at which they’d most like to be treated for Covid-19. It’s all fun and games unless you’re in Leicester, where drowning one’s sorrows by drinking home alone continues to be the miserable existence of inhabitants. Stanley Johnson fuelled family embarrassment, jetting off for a bit of fun in the sun in Greece, and Nigel Farage was unable to endure a single day more of mandatory quarantine, chucking it all in to head off to the pub instead.

The Treasury Communications team risked over-exertion this week, as Dishy Rishi emerged as the feminist icon we didn’t know we needed, with his saucy meal deal and trending hashtag “Eat out to help out” leaving women across the country hopeful for the future. Moving swiftly on in the perhaps naïve hope that that one passed way over my grandparents’ heads, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s magic mula tree is the gift that keeps on giving, as theatres have been left pleasantly discombobulated this week by the Conservatives’ uncharacteristic support package for the arts. The show must go on, and I for one am unreservedly grateful that my youngest brother’s virtual stage musical rehearsals may soon be drawing to a close.

July heralds the end of term and, in turn, the highlight of every undergraduate’s year: the big clear-out of the student hovel. For once, I was thankful for Coronavirus’ catwalk trend, the flattering fashion statement of a face mask; ready with repellent, I braced myself as I entered our kitchen, heeding a warning from my housemates who, visiting the week before, had opened the fridge and discovered what, only several hours later, they deciphered to be a 16-week-old banana. Speaking of radioactivity, the arrival of the summer holidays means that the youngest of my brothers now spends the majority of his days festering on FIFA, announcing to my proud parents that all prize earnings from his school French and Spanish awards will be put towards the purchase of the new game when it is released on 9th October.

BoJo’s Churchillian school leavers’ assembly was this week’s virtual attempt to give the Class of Coronavirus a boost of morale, yet the youth of today can rest assured, as Kanye West’s presidential bid provides welcome reassurance that anything is possible without a set of remotely relevant qualifications. This comes as particularly good news for my eldest brother, whose entrepreneurial exploits have now branched out into topiary, at least that’s the term he gave for the hash of a hedge my mother and I drove past in one client’s garden the other day.

Plans for the amateur landscaper’s self-funded gap year have unfortunately been scuppered, however, by the recently announced closure of all Kenyan schools; my heart did go out to both my brother and mother, who breathed in as they heard the news and the realisation hit that they might well have to endure each other’s company until September 2021. The reopening of Britain’s barbershops has provided my brother with at least some degree of respite, however, and the men of our household were quick to join the rest of the nation’s males in the hope of a remedy to their Coronavirus cock-ups. The first warning that things had gone badly came when my mother, a.k.a. the designated taxi driver, set off to collect the eldest of my brothers from the barber’s early, and 20 minutes later sent a rather intimidating threat aimed at my father on our family’s group WhatsApp chat.

I was kept in suspense until the brother in question returned home late in the evening after a hard day’s graft, sporting what can only be described as a haircut so horrific that sight of it alone would prompt Nicky Clarke to kick the bucket. 24 hours later, I am still debating which is worse: the monster of a mullet my brother had before, or the buzz cut eyesore which now threatens to scare Buckinghamshire’s old age pensioners into cardiac arrest. Body hair in general has proven to be one of lockdown’s most unfortunate victims; whilst the neglect of my legs would, in normal circumstances, be cause for concern, I did not even attempt to disguise my disgust towards my university friend’s freshly grown facial hair during a Zoom call the other evening – a decision I later regretted when the camera shifted to reveal his understandably offended girlfriend sat immediately to his left.

For those of you eagerly awaiting an update on the progress of our dining room mid-redecoration, my mother has spent the last fortnight chewing over which of 30 arguably indistinguishable shades of blue should be used to reupholster our chairs. You’ll be as pleased as I was to learn that, after two weeks of rumination, she came to the decision last night to stick with the cream coverings we’ve had for the last 20 years and to just have them dry cleaned. I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy this rollercoaster journey by myself, as the males at No. 9 have seemingly been glued to the television ever since the return of football to the screens.

Driving practice is calling, and so I should be off. It’s a true sign of unconditional love when your father is prepared to risk sitting in the passenger seat next to his daughter who hasn’t faced the steering wheel in the three years since she passed. He’d best strap in. I’ll write soon, but in the meantime, stay safe.

Charlotte x