Dear Trish
I don’t normally write to advice columnists, but I am very worried about a dear friend. She and I have become very close ever since she lost her job at a big firm and we started Zooming readers via Netflix. (Editor: “These are television shows, not Zooms.” Me: “Shurrup”.)
I would not have considered us compatible initially, given that she is an aristocrat scented of saffron and bathed in light and I am a humble Irish bog creature scented of cabbage and swaddled in corduroy and shame, but she has been signing her television Zooms, “With Love, M****n”, and that signals a certain intimacy to me.
Yes, we’re clearly very close.
We already have Great House Revival. What we need now is Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block
Dear Trish, I’m worried about my friend Meghan and her aggressive crafting
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I’d better give her a pseudonym. How about “the Meg”, because she has the kind eyes of an aquatic beast? Or maybe the Meg II, because this is series two of her Netflix Zooms with me? (Editor: “Netflix television shows, Patrick”. Me: “La la la, I can’t hear you.”)
Anyway, Trish, ever since the Meg lost her job she has become obsessively interested in crafting. Worryingly and aggressively interested in crafting.
Let me describe a typical Netflix Zoom with the Meg. We open with her skipping through a Christmas-tree farm. Then we cut to the Meg decorating the Christmas tree she has chosen from the plant abattoir.
She talks about how important it is that it’s “lit from within”. This makes it sound as if the tree might be on fire, but we move to another room before I can check. As I said, I’m worried about her.
Next she’s brandishing a scissors and working on a cloth Advent calendar at the kitchen table. The Meg’s main skill is nice handwriting. This was a major selling point back in the 19th century but not so much these days.
She writes a note for one of the pouches in the cloth Advent calendar: “I love you because you are so kind.” You probably find this a bit much. I may not have mentioned this, but the Meg is American and not Irish. The notes we put into Advent calendars in Ireland say things like, “You could have made an effort this once, for your mother, at Christmas,” and, “Well, I hope you’re happy,” and, “Just FYI, not all of you are in the will.”
She introduces a man named Will Guidara, a restaurateur. He has written a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It is, I believe, about hostage situations. Ironically, he’s now in something of a hostage situation himself, in which he is fed sweet treats by my best friend the Meg. “It’s pretty jolly around here,” he says with terror.
Then, as is her wont, she gets Guidara to engage in some frantic crafting. They make Christmas crackers and put toys and jokes in them. It is suggested that children will love this thoughtfulness, though in my experience children really say things like, “I would prefer money.”
The Meg II gazes at her works and waxes lyrical about “the perfect imperfection that comes from human connection”, which really makes me think. What I think is, “Aren’t you rich enough to just go to Marks & Spencer?”
The Meg reappears in pyjamas. “Make an effort, the Meg!” I cry. But she’s quickly joined by two other pyjama-clad ne’er-do-wells. They are having a pyjama party. The lesson? Wearing pyjamas during the day is fine if rich people do it.
She makes her fellow pyjama people create Christmas wreaths, though something about the whole thing makes me think of death. Making other people work for her is, incidentally, the Meg’s love language.
She does something similar with Naomi Osaka. “What is your favourite thing about the holidays?” the Meg asks after feeding her for a while.
“Honestly, I think, family,” the captive athlete says with tears in her eyes, wondering if she‘ll ever see them again.
“Shall we go craft?” the Meg says, coldly. Osaka soon disappears into the void from which she came.
Tom Colicchio from Top Chef is here now. This is basically a decommissioned CIA black site. Colicchio creates a salad. The Meg makes a family recipe, gumbo, and they offer both up to Mr the Meg, who arrives for a cameo.
He is almost as famous as the Meg, because he is an unemployed prince. Whereas being a monarch’s son might once have meant riding into war at the head of an army, now it involves looking awkward while being performatively fed on Netflix.
“Save me!” he blinks in Morse code. We all laugh.
Our Zoom is coming to an end. My best friend signs off with “Happy Holidays” and then her signature: the Meg, duchess of Sussex.
I suspect the Meg hasn’t come to terms with the fact that she lost her old job and is throwing herself into excessive crafting as a self-soothing strategy. She would certainly have fallen apart completely if not for Netflix Zooms with close friends like myself. (Editor: “Patrick, this isn’t a Zoom, it’s a television pro…” Me: “Whisht!”)
Any advice is welcome.
On The Liz Truss Show (YouTube) the former UK prime minister argues that Britain has “fallen”, and she does so without recourse to facts or kindness or ideological coherence. It’s the sort of hateful, self-pitying and fearful guff beloved of the right-wing snowflake community.
But forget the specifics. I’m here to marvel at the phenomenon of Truss, a woman who crashed the British economy, sitting in what looks like the chilly hallway of a shared house complaining about the competence of other politicians.
The show begins and ends with Truss ranting at a desk. Halfway through each sentence she loses faith, then dozes off for a bit before rousing herself for the last clause.
Later, during the interview segments, she gazes into the middle distance across a coffee table, and the patriotic clownfolk she is interviewing all seem unsure where to look. These people love a good fantasy, and Truss is, sadly for them, the policymaking reality of their rotten dreams.
And what dreams! Truss lives in the uncanny valley. Sometimes she blinks too much. Sometimes she blinks not at all. She smiles constantly. When she speaks she does so with the surprised force of someone who has just remembered that she left the cooker on or that she misplaced the economy. Occasionally she lifts her arms, like Lord Summerisle, to make a point but seems to forget to lower them again.
It often feels as if she’s Weekend at Bernie’s-ing herself. There’s a plant on the coffee table. It is, I eventually conclude, the most charismatic plant I have ever seen. Now that’s a plant with vision, a plant I could vote for.
