Spectator writers in lockdown – by the people stuck with them

Andrew Watts (Tanya Gold)

‘I can’t eat this,’ said The Spectator’s restaurant critic, putting down her fork after one mouthful. Our son, who had not yet decided whether he liked mackerel, immediately declared that it was yucky-poo. The correction of taste is, after all, the function of criticism. When we’re not in lockdown, Tanya leaves the house to be a critic. I am left at home with the boy to eat fish, liver and haggis, all of which he loves when she isn’t here to tell him that they are, objectively, bad. I wouldn’t mind if she hadn’t gone straight from the kitchen table to sit in her study and eat Monster Munch while watching Spooks. Or if she hadn’t been the one who sent me out to buy mackerel from a fisherman offering it for sale by the quay because the fish markets had closed. Or if I could get back the time I spent watching YouTube videos on how to fillet mackerel. I could, I suppose, rebel and insist that she takes over in the kitchen, but Tanya can only cook two dishes: one of them is spaghetti bolognese, the other one isn’t. She likes to joke that the only thing she really knows how to make is reservations. It’s not a joke.

Julian Glover (Matthew Parris)

Matthew has built a den in his bedroom. He’s dragged his duvet from his bed and draped it around his desk, surrounding himself with more soft furnishings to deaden the noise in case the BBC rings up and asks him to broadcast to the nation. Downstairs, amid a scattering of hacksaws and screwdrivers, he carries out increasingly perilous DIY jobs while wearing an old woollen dressing gown, most recently rewiring a pre-war brass electric fire with a switch which flashes sparks when you turn it on.