Lockdown might bring the Dickensian Christmas back into fashion

I feel like a prisoner, making daily marks on the cell wall to chart the approach of freedom. But will it be freedom, or will we be on parole, obliged to wear a tag and subject to re-incarceration at authority’s whim? Such thoughts do not encourage equanimity.

On that subject, I remember a delightfully splenetic political column by the late — alas — Alan Watkins, published a generation ago. As Christmas approaches, even the most acerbic hack feels obliged to relent and sound a little more like Fezziwig, a little less like Scrooge. Perhaps because he was never given to excessive astringency, Alan did not relent.

He was complaining about secretaries, who were then numerous in newspaper offices. As the season came on apace, some of the girls would decide to indulge themselves in a lunch at the sort of restaurant they were used to booking for their bosses. That had two consequences. First, the restaurant became fully booked. So this female frivolity would come between the journalist and the tools of his trade: knife, fork, glass, wine list et al. Second, at least one of the ladies was bound to over-indulge. When the men returned, not in the best of humours after being obliged to settle for a lesser establishment, there was more bad news. Even after only a modest potation in the pursuit of enlightenment, there might still be a case for a further cup of coffee. But it would be hard to find anyone to make it, let alone do any typing or process some expenses. All the girls would be relaying weak tea and aspirins to poor Miranda who was moaning in the ladies’ loo. Wise counsel might have attempted to para-phrase the most enchanting of her sex, Rosalind — ‘Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for hangovers’ — and suggest that the sufferer would feel better after a few minutes at the key-board.