“WHAT do you mean you’ve invited a few people round? Who are these people?” my spouse demands.
“Friends. Our friends,” I reply.
“How many?” he challenges.
“Five,” I fib.
“Five including us or five in addition to us?” He is shining the Ikea desktop lamp straight into my eyes, as I squirm, tied to a chair in the utility room.
“Um…”
“So seven people in all? That’s not a few. That is a superspreader event. I will play no part in this madness! No part, I tell you!”
Perhaps you can tell, as I gently draw the blinds on this intimate marital exchange, that the chill winds of dissent are whistling through Woods Towers these days and not just because I’m a Radio 4 woman and he’s a Radio 3 man.
Oh no, the internal divisions – the family fissures – run much deeper than tussles over the respective merits of Petroc Trelawny and Mishal Husain.
Right now my husband is Team Jenny while I am Team Boris (yes, I know, but there really is a first time for everything, self-evidently). I say “right now” but frankly I suspect my corona-cautious spouse has been waiting (longing) for the next scientifically authorised excuse to hibernate for yet another winter.
Jenny is Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, who has suggested we should curb unnecessary socialising to slow the spread of the omicron Covid variant. Her expertise stems from the fact she is a scientist.
Boris is the politician making a Peppa Pig’s ear of running the country, who has rubbished the idea of curtailing Christmas parties. His expertise stems from the fact he is a bon viveur.
What’s peculiar about our battle lines is that chez nous I’m the one Maureen Lipman would generously describe as the ‘ologist, shouting out the answers to organic chemistry questions on University Challenge.
I understand enough quantum physics to know it’s silly nonsense. And I once adopted a calico cat and called her Solenoid.
But this time I’m finding the scientific medicine hard to swallow. Why? Because I regard socialising as entirely necessary for my mental health; the pandemic has left me so starved of human interaction with anyone other than my very nearest and dearest that I despair of more restrictions.
Yes, we could all reduce the chances of most things – road traffic accidents, bar room brawls, genital herpes – and save lives if we avoided contact with one another and just stayed home, alone. But what sort of empty lives would we be saving?
I will dutifully wear a mask, launder my hands like Lady Macbeth after a trip to Londis (hardly anyone I know still does this) and promise never again to hug socially until the very end of the night when I’m several wines in and clutching anyone who has a nice smile.
But I can’t cut back on human interaction. Generally speaking, my instinct is to tiptoe away from Prime Ministerial pronouncements, but here I find myself unexpectedly standing with Boris.
My husband stands with Jenny from the Block. The science block, obviously, where elaborate worst case scenarios are conjured up on a daily – hourly – basis.
If we have learnt one thing from the pandemic (apart from that there’s no need to stockpile loo roll) it is that scientists very often – and sometimes very vigorously – disagree. Even those on the same committee.
My esteemed spouse is mustard keen to follow the science, wherever it may go. As long as that science leads him straight back indoors, that is.
He couldn’t warm to Dr Jenny more if she had come round and summarily bolted our front door from the outside.
Her words are now an incantation. In fact, I might hack them into the wood with my unused cocktail swizzler before I succumb to the effects of social deprivation.
My heroically self-contained husband doesn’t crave company the way I do. Quite often he doesn’t even crave conversation.
If that sounds like a criticism, rest assured he regards this observation as being somewhere between a fact and a compliment. How much worse to be a needy chit-chatterer. Apparently.
No wonder I can’t countenance pulling out of Christmas parties or putting the kibosh on my forthcoming soirée.
I’ve offered to make guests conduct lateral flow tests at the garden gate as they arrive. He’s still not convinced. I think he’d prefer an al fresco transmissibility seminar à deux with Dr Jenny.
We acknowledge it takes a village to raise a child. So, it transpires, my marriage needs five (or so) friends to thrive and survive. I just never imagined one would be Boris.
