<!–
<!–
<!–
<!–
<!–
<!–
David 1.0 messaged to say, ‘Are you still up for a visit this weekend?’
To be honest, I’m not, so I put him off. I can’t cope with having to monitor a man, making sure he doesn’t lose my keys, let Teddy out of the front door, make me search for his phone and his vape, place a hot pan on a work surface, leave a tea bag in the sink or even (as happened once) light up a fag in my spare bathroom. Or how about the time he reversed my Land Rover Defender into a wall? Or took back his cat without telling me, meaning I spent three days combing the countryside for her? I have enough to do, looking after Mini Puppy.
This is her routine.
Having been shut in the bedroom with me all night (she can no longer use the sofa to get on the bed), I help her stand then put on her harness, which is padded and covers her tummy. Once she’s up, I use the harness to help her walk slowly downstairs. The other day, we got stuck, so I had to phone the man painting the outside of my house to come and carry her down; at 23 kilos she’s too heavy for me. Her face looked so indignant at being manhandled by someone she barely knows, her snowy paws flailing: she was like a reluctant bride being carried over the threshold.
Once she is downstairs, I help her outside for a very long wee. Throughout the day she has various tablets: steroids (to help her appetite),iron (she has pale gums and can faint), one for her heart, an antibiotic and a supplement that helps line her stomach. A vet and a nurse may come later in the day to administer a long-lasting injection of pain relief and to take more bloods.
I follow her around all day, adopting a Groucho Marx posture. My go-to method of coping when I’m stressed has always been to binge-watch 1930s screwball comedies. My favourite is Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Watch the scene where George the dawg (that’s my impression of Hepburn’s delicious drawl) steals the intercostal clavicle (a fictitious dinosaur bone invented by the screenwriters) belonging to Grant’s nerdy palaeontologist. The crazy couple tail George (real name Skippy, who died aged 20) round the grounds of a cabin in upstate New York, believing the dawg has buried it. ‘Somebody watch George!’
That encapsulates my daily antics, tailing Mini.
At some point I will have to sleep downstairs but, at the moment, sticking to her usual routine seems to keep her happy. The downside is that my lovely oak parquet floor is now covered with glittery pink rugs by Next, donated by Nic to help Mini get purchase.
As I can’t leave her, I had to cancel a work trip (to Paris, for Fashion Week; I’m secretly thrilled, as the prospect of sitting on the front row while the other women talk around me doesn’t spark joy. I’d booked Hôtel Costes, which is so badly lit you can fail to recognise your own hand in the lift. I would often start, thinking I was about to be mugged. Which in a way I was, every time I ended up buying a £350 Gucci fitted shirt, one in white, one in black, from the Colette store opposite).
This is the first time I’ve ever not travelled for work due to personal reasons. When Lizzie my horse died, I was in Canada, learning to be a trapeze artist. When my dad died, I took one afternoon as holiday. When my mum passed away, it was a Saturday (well done, Mum), but I still filed this column that very afternoon.
I’m not being heroic or unfeeling; it’s just that I find writing cathartic. Writing down what happened in an argument, say, means I can put it aside, not endlessly chew it over. For the first time, though, I am not hoping something bad will happen so that my column goes viral: my only thought on hearing my husband confess to yet another affair while on a remote African island – a holiday paid for by me – was that it would make a two-parter.
Forthe first time, I love someone (Mini, because she is a person) more than my blasted career.
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- I always held that Christmas without Selfridges is like sex without foreplay. I stand corrected (and not on the sex part). I went into the Oxford Street store last week and was sorely disappointed: it’s morphing into Harrods with a dedicated Disney store. Searching for an espresso machine, they all looked shabby.
- Someone hacked my email last week. The only good thing about having no secrets and no money is there is very little to blackmail me with, or steal.
