It’s not looking rosy: no petrol, no gas and, perhaps even more troubling, the threat of no pigs in blankets this Christmas. At such a time, I believe we must look to the aristocracy for help.
Bear with me. British toffs are survivors. Forget the French and the Russian ones. They were knocked off years ago. And you may still come across the odd Italian count, but they were technically disbanded a while back, too. Unlike British nobs, who have literally lasted centuries and are well known for being hardy, parsimonious sorts who would rather admit to loving their own children than turn the heating on in December. Who better to guide us through these tricky next few months? Call it the Aristocracy’s Apocalypse Survival Guide.
Take my great-aunt Dulcie, who used to boil an egg every morning for breakfast, then carefully tip that salty egg water into a Thermos and use it for cups of tea throughout the day. No sign yet that we’re going to run out of water, but with this Government in charge it can only be a matter of days. Dust off those Thermoses. Plan accordingly.
Or you could breakfast in the manner of one friend’s Scottish grandmother, who had a “porridge drawer”. She’d make a big batch of the stuff every Monday, pour it into this drawer to set, then hack out chunks to keep her going all week. Porridge, at the time of writing, was still on the supermarket shelves.
If turkeys really are in short supply, consider roadkill. My grandmother, Dulcie’s sister, was a big fan of peeling pheasants off the tarmac when she came across them near her home in Berwickshire. My great-grandmother on the other side, a baroness who lived in a Sussex castle, once served up guinea pigs to her family for lunch. “Delicious chicken,” they told her, only to be informed otherwise. There followed a distraught conference among the children, who later extracted a solemn promise from the baroness that the goldfish in the pond outside would remain alive. I tell you this if the idea of a nut roast on Christmas Day really is too much to bear.
Leftovers, obviously, must be kept. Another friend’s grandmother used to bung hers straight into the freezer and, when she died, left behind a tub with a label that simply read, “Could be giblets”.Baroness Rawlings is a Norfolk-based posh person with a wealth of frugal tips. Leave the bathwater in the tub after using it, not necessarily to make tea (although I wouldn’t have put it past great-aunt Dulcie), but to keep the room warm for hours. If you make Melba toast for a dinner party, she advises reserving the crusts to fry and use for soldiers at breakfast. It’s only sensible.
A chap called Sir Richard FitzHerbert says one should always keep an eye out for stray wood on dog walks, so you can carry it home and use it on the fire. My pheasant grandmother used to snip the tails off my grandfather’s shirts to mend his collars. Forget buying anything new for party season; rifle through your wardrobe with a pair of scissors instead.
Invest in a few chickens, as the late Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire did. If you can’t find fuel for your car, consider buying a couple of zebras and a carriage, and cruising around like the second Baron Rothschild. Buy up bottles of gin and Dubonnet and drink solidly from now until February. Didn’t do the Queen Mother any harm.
Watch out for the irresistible rise of dodgy dating
Tell you what we’re not running short of: affairs. According to the dubious dating site Illicit Encounters, its membership is up threefold on this time last year.
Boredom, apparently; people seeking extramarital thrills as the pandemic’s aftershocks continue to rumble. As it happens, my next novel is about a dotty 65-year-old called Marjorie, a private detective who specialises in affairs and is nicknamed “the affair hunter”.
I’ve learnt all sorts researching affairs (academically, I mean), as well as interviewing real-life private detectives. One of the best anecdotes I came across was about a wife who busted her cheating husband when she spotted a footprint on the inside of the car windscreen. Keep your eyes peeled if suspicious.
