A Year of Much Bickering by Jane Ayres

Mute is definitely the word of the week. ‘Day  17. The housemates are in the diary room.’  If Crichton says that one more time, in his silly Newcastle accent, I shall have to socially distance myself from him, with a hatchet.  Of course, we are all perfectly well, have enormous amounts of loo roll, plenty of Jaffa Cakes, and are lucky to have more outdoor space than we need, so I shouldn’t complain. But sometimes it would be nice to take a stroll to the church or have lunch with the girls. I’ve never had a lot of time for Davina McCall but if she arrived now with a crowd of photographers and said we could all go off to the Pelican’s Nest for a gin and Dubonnet again, I would kiss the hem of her blessed garment. Jerome has stayed in Cambridge with Hilary, but Arraminta is home with us. She tends to appear in her PJ’s sometime around noon, cruising the cupboards for chocolate biscuits and Pot Noodles and I haven’t got the heart to be cross, even ...

Much Bickering Manor is in Lock Down There is no doubt that being socially isolated is character forming, not least because Alyona  decided to hole herself up in her little semi in the village and refuses point blank to come anywhere near The Manor. So inconsiderate. We could have found her a bed in the attic, but no. After all I’ve done for her, she’d prefer to be at home on 80% wages, doing nothing while I am left with the Harry hoover and a box of tatty dusters. It’s a good job we won’t be getting any visitors as I find it very dull work and Cook refuses to increase her hours until she has finished watching her box sets of Downton Abbey. There are six series and poor Lavinia hasn’t even caught the Spanish flu yet.  The carpets will be knee deep in dog hair before The Dowager Countess gets to speak her last lines. And talking of Dowagers, this morning Brexit and I took my one allotted period of exercise and walked over to Granny T’s with some es...