Keeping romance alive during lockdown

Living in lockdown with your boyfriend in a two-room flat is not easy, even for the nation’s sweetheart like me.

My boyfriend quickly started getting annoyed about stupid things, like when my herbal oat body wash blocked up the shower and he grumbled that it looked like poo.

“How dare you be so disrespectful” I bellowed “That’s Lush. We aspire to being a household worthy of their lifestyle!”

Lush is of course, for fancy girls. Gals who go running every morning, have a battered tin of lip balm in their handbag that they never seem to lose and subscribe to vegetable boxes. I want to put Lush down as my next of kin.

So on the very first night of official lockdown, desperate to get away from my stupid boyfriend’s terrible views on organic hygiene products, I went to cruise the aisles of Waitrose.

I was halfway through the vegetable section when I felt the all too familiar tension that comes from a day drinking too much coffee. An urgent push down below, the warning sign that the game was afoot, that the Suez Canal needed to be urgently unblocked.

Let me explain, for me personally, when a train is about to leave the station, I do not get much warning. A tinny announcement over the tannoy and that’s it. God forbid there’s a platform change. It’s why you’ll often find me pale-faced, staggering into a coffee shop, mutely buying an overpriced pastry while I scan for the sweet refuge of the ladies.

I’m basically like the little boy from the ITV series Woof, but instead of turning into a dog at the worst possible moment, I need my own pooper scooper. We both end up huddled in a lot of bushes, often needing a change of clothes. Where’s my zany kids show, you cowards?

I once drank too much coffee and nearly pooped my pants at the JFK museum in Hyannis Port, and I felt terrible. The Kennedy family had been through enough.

I looked around the dignity of the Waitrose shelves and thought, not here. In Aldi, fine, it's an everyday danger for the staff there. I won't be the first person who needed a clean-up on aisle three there. But no, not Waitrose.

I needed to get back to the flat as quickly as possible.

The key, and I do discuss this in more detail in my TED talk on the issue, is to keep everything tight down below and your brain distracted. Try to think about something that will focus the mind. I like to list the ex-husbands of Jennifer Lopez.

I had got to just five minutes from home and her marriage to Marc Anthony when I saw my worst nightmare, a red man at the pedestrian crossing. It happened so quickly, the release of tension, the bitter sweet mirage of thinking actually maybe I don’t need to poo anymore, the crashing shame of realising why I suddenly felt so much more relaxed.

The absolute horror. Five minutes ago, I was an innocent normal woman, an adult human. I remembered to bring plastic bags to the supermarket for god's sake. That all meant nothing now. It was another lifetime. Now, here I was a monster.

With the sad loyalty of a defeated soldier, I waddled home. Opening the door of the flat, seeing the profile of my boyfriend on the couch, I felt a glimmer of hope, could I claw back some dignity? Would he have to know?

I slipped into the toilet, dropped my jeans, took off my knickers, wrapped them in a shower cap, gingerly hoisted my jeans back up, washed my hands, put my coat back on and casually side-stepped into the bedroom past my boyfriend on the couch.

I go to my side of the bed, change into my PJs, throw my jeans in the wash basket, shimmy back into the kitchen with my shower cap of shame tucked under my arm and pop it in the bin. I got on the couch and snuggled up to my boyfriend. I had gotten away with it. The perfect crime. For a split-second I thought maybe I can have it all? Maybe it didn’t even really happen? I felt smug, as smug as someone who’s just shat themselves in public can feel.

And then like all great criminals, I got too confident.

I couldn’t find my glasses and I sent the boyfriend to look for them. I’m great to live with like that. He headed off into the bedroom and then there was silence. Finally, he called out my name but it was with an air of formality that that let me know something was terribly wrong.

I came in to find him standing by my side of the bed, like a detective discovering a dead body.

I realised in all my movements I had never once paused to look down.

On the floor by my side of the bed was what I can only describe as a crumbly cattle track of human faeces, a smelly brick road, a trail of smears.

And across the floor where I had obviously trod barefoot, tracks of smeared brown footprints that looked like primitive cave paintings.

He looked down at me, the floor and back up to me and said with absolute sadness -  “Is this what I think it is? I don’t want to start a fight. Is this more of your Lush stuff?”

And honestly, it was letting Lush down that hurt most of all.

Things that have annoyed me this week: WHEN AMBITIOUS PEOPLE DISCOVER SPIRITUALITY

Hello to everyone, except people who brag about being spiritual. I don’t mean actual spiritual people; the ones who view a personal connection with a power greater than themselves as a source of private help and comfort.

I don’t even mean people who enjoy a crystal and the odd chakra cleanse. Given the choice between science and say, a good poem, I’d choose Seamus Heaney every time. I do believe in vaccines obviously but I also, don’t not believe that fairies are real.

So when I mean “spiritual” people, I mean ambitious people who have adopted it as a brand. People who’ve realised saying they’re exploring alternative faiths is a really great way of talking about themselves.

Hinduism, Shamanism, Buddhism have been around for thousands of years. They are complex belief systems, that people spend their lives studying; you can’t just sign up for a Native American Inner Goddess course and use “honouring your inner chi” as a reason for not helping your friend move house. 

If you’re going to take Ayahuasca, do it because you’ve always wanted to talk to oak trees, not because you’ve heard Amy Schumer did it right before she got her film deal.  

 The new spirituality doesn’t seem to mean being a good person and helping others, it’s about hypnotising yourself into believing you are entitled to everything and anyone that expresses doubt, is negative and to be avoided.

My entire life I’ve been told that success is all about hard work, discipline and tenacity But in the last few years it feels like everyone decided without telling me, that actually it’s about getting really good at mediation.

Success is now a sign of their spiritual goodness. I love being lectured by wealthy, well connected social climbers with a black belt in networking, that all their success was down to a really great visualisation board.

Spirituality shouldn’t be like Amazon Prime; an investment to make sure the universe sends you everything you want, quicker.

Rather than acknowledge that life can be unfair, and some people have advantages others don’t, corporate spirituality makes people feel hardship is their own fault for not being positive enough, not keeping a gratitude diary, not sending the right message out to the universe. Because what did sadness ever give the world except for empathy, motivation to fight injustice and all the art ever produced?

I recently saw a Zoom class advertised where you can discover your spirit animal, go on a vision quest and incorporate Native American rituals into your life to boost your creativity; it was 3 hours long and £50. Pocahontas did not throw the first brick at Stonewall to be disrespected like that. I really really hope, somewhere in China, someone is advertising a one-hour guide to Christianity to help you get better at PowerPoint presentations. Namaste.