Rachel Johnson

Kyrgyzstan Forget the detailed itinerary – a 12-day trip that included the vertiginous 2,446-metre Kotorma pass on horseback – the packing list alone ran to a dizzying several pages. Sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, three pairs of jodhpurs, chaps, riding boots, waterproof riding coat… I hadn’t seen anything like it since I went to prep school aged ten as the first girl at Ashdown House. My mother took me from Brussels to Harrods uniform department with an extensive list. I left with a St Trinian’s trousseau of navy kilts and Aertex shirts, tuck box and trunk. As D-Day approached last week, I managed to source most items for the riding safari.

I am ‘sharing’ what follows as a public service. Also, as self-care in the hope that publicly shaming myself might stop me from doing it again. What can she be on about, you must be thinking, this time? My name is Rachel Johnson, and I have a chronic inability to leave the house on time, even for something I have been looking forward to for months. One example: heli-skiing in Italy with my son Oliver. All I had to do was catch a flight to Geneva whence we would be conveyed to a divine off-grid chalet via car and driver, then snowmobile. I had one job. To get us to Heathrow for the breakfast-time flight.

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing, as her funeral fell during the Arctic spell that whitened the bracken and iced over puddles the colour of Dairy Milk. When we drove into Simonsbath just after lunchtime, the sun was only grazing the hilltops, leaving valleys in deep shadows. We’d allowed plenty of time, but the lanes were already crammed with vehicles. My husband and I had intended to stand at the back of St Luke’s so as not to take up precious places, but thanks to Ivo’s near-village-elder status we were ordered into the emergency seating in the chancel.

A man called Gianluca and I mounted the steps to the Friedrichsbad in pensive silence. We hadn’t made eye contact since we’d met in reception at our hotel, the divine Brenners, for this rendezvous with destiny. At the front desk, we were sternly reminded again of the dress code. We nodded. For the next three hours we were going to be stark naked in a 19th-century, Renaissance-themed, domed and frescoed temple to the God of Thermal Springs, adorned with hand-painted majolica tiles, statuary and a sequence of pools and chambers. ‘Kein Textil,’ the woman repeated. After removing every stitch, we processed to the shower room – me checking that the area, which was equipped with vast ceiling-mounted bronze fittings, had several exits. I was wearing only blue plastic slippers.

Jilly Cooper, the last great Englishwoman of my lifetime – after Queen Elizabeth II and Debo – has died. The lights are going out all over Rutshire. During her life, Jilly shone as an author, a friend and a person – the definition of effervescent. You had to meet her only once to become a founder member of the Jilly Cooper Adoration Society. When she wrote her last book, Tackle!, about a rural football club complete with ‘bitch invasions’ and ghastly Wags, I told her that, in a way, she was the beautiful game, only she gave entertainment to millions not by striking a ball but by putting one word in front of another on her ancient typewriter, Monica. (A friend told me she liked to write topless in the garden, with a glass of wine.

It was the morning after the night before and I was picking glass out of my leg by a pool, blotting the blood trickling down my calf with a navy spotted handkerchief. I was trying to work out how the shards of glass came to be there… and then it came back to me. But first, let’s rewind. I was taking my seat on the British Airways 10 a.m. flight to Nice. ‘Not another one!’ a woman right behind me in steerage complained. ‘Is this some special flight or something?’ I stowed my Globe-Trotter in the overhead locker and made eye contact with her. ‘Piers Morgan is up front,’ she explained. ‘And that’s Matt Goss.’ She pointed to a tidy man minding his own business a few rows ahead.

Looking back, I can pinpoint my fatal blunder. It was lunch. It was like the West allowing Vladimir Putin to help himself to the Crimean peninsula without a peep, basically. This is how it happened. My husband had invited two families to stay over the May bank holiday which bled into half term. For four days. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in light tones, ahead of their arrival. ‘I’ve told them they’re bringing all the food and doing all the cooking.’ As if I’d welcome this wonderful idea, when in fact what he’d suggested was the domestic equivalent of handing over the nuclear football and the codes behind my back.