Flora Watkins

It’s a long time since I took a powerful drug that wasn’t dispensed by a pharmacist. Last winter, during what has become the annual post-Christmas Covid collapse, I searched in vain for the codeine cough linctus I’d been prescribed when the virus first struck four years ago.  Why must we suffer because a few scrotes misuse it? ‘Keep it on the bedside table,’ said my GP at the time, ‘and when you wake up coughing in the night, take a swig and you’ll be able to go back to sleep.’ She was right: it provided blissful relief and precious, life-enhancing sleep. But when I asked my current GP (we’ve since moved out of London), she gazed into the middle distance and made gnomic pronouncements of the ilk, ‘We don’t really do that any more’.

As spring (finally) arrives, it’s time to turn our attention back to what’s outside the back door. Helpfully, garden designer Isabel Bannerman (Highgrove, Houghton Hall, Arundel Castle) has written a memoir, Husbandry, in which she declares there is no such thing as ‘U and non-U’ in gardening. She then undermines her argument by immediately setting out her shibboleths: variegated leaves, curvy paths, statues, fountains, tidiness. Anything, in effect, that is ‘suburban’ (bedding plants) or reminiscent of municipal planting schemes (ibid. those big, blowsy King Alfred daffodils you’ll see blaring from roundabouts at this time of year).

Ping! My phone vibrates with a message from a new friend. A mild spike of dopamine dissipates on seeing she’s left me a WhatsApp voice note. However, it’s short and, hopefully, it’s a one-off.  I reply with a text message, hoping she’ll register the switch in communications. Ping! Oh no. She’s a voice-noter. She’s a bloody voice-noter. And this one is well over two minutes long and I don’t know her very well, so I’m going to have to listen to the whole thing without speeding it up. It’s an invitation to dinner, but this does nothing to quell my mounting frustration and irrational thoughts of disengaging myself from this nascent friendship.  ‘Yes great thanks,’ I reply by text, without – pointedly – an ‘X’.

When I lived in north London as a postgraduate student, my flatmates amused themselves by shouting abusive names at the then member for Henley as he cycled past on his way to the Commons from his house in Islington. But judging by the reaction from my old neighbours in Herne Hill, Boris Johnson is likely to receive an even less affable greeting there. The erstwhile prime minister and his wife have reportedly bought a five-bedroom home in Herne Hill, the leafy liberal, left-leaning pocket of south-east London where I lived for almost 20 years before moving to Norfolk last summer.

‘Ah,’ says my husband at the top of the cliff path at Overstrand, ‘it’s just like a Shirley Hughes illustration.’ There are sandcastles, wooden groynes, children and dogs running in and out of the waves. Then his eye falls on the first land grab of the day. Three generations of the same family are hard at work constructing their citadel: popping up polyester tents to form a wide arc, shovelling shingle into the flaps to secure them, unfurling windbreaks across either end to mark the outer limits of their encampment. We – like the family in a favourite Hughes picture book from my childhood, Lucy and Tom at the Seaside (1976) – have travelled with just ‘the picnic things and bathing bags and buckets and spades’.

What are the unexpected benefits to have come out of Covid? Letterbox cocktails? An irrefutable excuse for you to bail on a social occasion? An end to gouty Great-Uncle Matthew lunging for a slobbery kiss at Christmas? Like a booster shot, most of these will wear off over time, so we should make the most of them. Similarly, a recent trip to the National Gallery prompted a flurry of bookings as soon as we got home. For the first time, it was possible to appreciate favourite paintings unencumbered by a sea of iPads held aloft by un-seeing tourists. 'Just buy a postcard in the shop!' snapped no-one at all. It was bliss. Peaceful. Civilised. Of course, this isn’t sustainable.

'Have you got any advice?' my friend calls to ask, ahead of going to pick up their pandemic puppy. 'Well, um, as first-time dog owners, I’d say steer clear of spaniels and poodles… but it’s a bit late for that, ha!' 'Ha,' she says, thinking I’m joking and off they go to fetch their cute, Disneyfied cockapoo. What could possibly go wrong? He’s a small dog — they were very clear that they needed a small dog to fit in with their family— he’s friendly, he’s a hypoallergenic little ball of floof. He even looks like a child’s teddy bear. A year on and Harvey the cockapoo is neither small nor cuddly, towering over both his spaniel and poodle parent.

Back in the summer of 2015 as I awaited the birth of my second son, when people asked me about my burgeoning bump — as they are wont to do of heavily-pregnant women — I kept receiving the same, curious response. ‘Oh you haven’t timed that well,’ random strangers would say. ‘August babies don’t do so well at school — and they never become Premiership footballers.’ As I smiled politely and thanked them for their unsolicited advice, I thought again and again, ‘What right-thinking mother would want their son to be a Premiership footballer?’ The sleaze, the moral corruption, the obscene salaries and conspicuous consumption.

‘Freezing winter gave way to frosty spring, which in turn merged to chilly summer,’ was how Jessica Mitford recalled her Cotswolds childhood in her memoir, Hons and Rebels. Our inclement climes have rarely been as hard to bear as they have this year, with the unusually cold, grey spring — coupled with the prospect of another staycation — severely dampening spirits that were already low. However optimistic the Met Office might be, we can never rely on a ‘barbecue summer’ in this country. So when weathering another rainy bank holiday or a soggy half-term in a damp cottage, try the literary equivalent of dressing for the job you want, not the one you have. But be warned: golden summers rarely make for happy endings.

After 14 months of subsisting in loungewear, with a social life largely provided by Netflix box sets and Deliveroo, many would gladly attend the opening of an envelope in order to get out of the house. Thanks to the vagaries of British weather, ‘dressing up’ has hitherto meant extra layers and grabbing the blanket off the end of the bed to go and sit outside the pub for a couple of hours. But from Monday 17 May we can drink and dine and dance indoors once more in fabulous destinations for which we’ll definitely need to slough off the jeans… The Candlelight Club We keep being told that the post-Covid world will give way to a new Roaring 20s.

Pity the poor panoramic restaurant. They might boast the best views of the capital, but the lack of outdoor space on the 42nd floor means they haven’t been able to take advantage of the easing of restrictions for the hospitality industry — until now. But from 17 May, they’ll be sashaying out of lockdown like the sequin-clad Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  With gala dinners, champagne cocktails and complimentary magnums of Moet to tempt you back, here’s where to go. Searcy’s at The Gherkin London’s original sky-high dining room on levels 39 and 40 of The Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe, EC3) is welcoming guests back with a series of five-course gala dinners during their opening week.

According to the Yale sociologist, Professor Nicholas Christakis, we are on the verge of a second Roaring Twenties. Just as the 1918 flu pandemic ushered in an era of excess, so too will Covid, as people 'relentlessly seek out social interactions'. This could take the form, he believes, of lavish spending and 'sexual licentiousness'. Or at the very least, changing out of the bottom half of our pyjamas.  Under the next relaxation of lockdown restrictions on 16 May, groups of six will be able to meet indoors — prompting many a wag to tweet that they’ll need to start finding excuses to stay in again. After more than a year without normal social interaction, in which so much has changed, having friends over is fraught with difficulties.

Even before the news of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh was announced, Buckingham Palace had had to suspend ticket sales for visiting its gardens this summer, due to overwhelming demand. With the annual summer opening of the State rooms cancelled for the second year running due to the pandemic, the opportunity to picnic in the grounds of the Queen’s London home has proved irresistible. Even the US networks have carried the story. Tickets, at the time of writing, were not available. But don’t despair.

The game is afoot! Yes, yet again! Hot on the hob-nailed heels of Enola Holmes, the Netflix film about the great detective’s younger sister, comes yet another spin on Sherlock. This time the streaming service brings us The Irregulars, a gaggle of Victorian urchins hired by Dr Watson to investigate crimes with a supernatural element. Elementary, you might say. Though I won’t, because it’s so tired and clichéd. And this convoluted Conan Doyle cash-in isn’t just jumping the shark — the producers of The Irregulars are so far gone, they’ve cleared the wall of the orcas’ tank and have beached themselves in the carpark. ‘Whatever is it like in your funny little brains?’, as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock said.