Suzanne Harrington: Imagine losing staff who buff Aston Martins

When Nietzsche optimistically told us that what didn’t kill us would make us stronger, he hadn’t reckoned on Covid-19 locking us up together for thousands of hours.

Nietzsche would not have embraced lockdown.

He would not have made banana bread and done gratitude lists and got excited about stupid tiger rednecks on Netflix.

No. Even as a fervent Alpine hiker — “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”— he still had a catastrophic mental breakdown at 44 which left him insane for the rest of his life.

Worse still, his unfinished work was edited and manipulated by his Hitler-loving sister so that everyone thought he was a Nazi.

None of this made him stronger.

Spare a thought then for all the people also not growing stronger as they struggle to learn new skill sets while stuck indoors with dependants towards whom they may be feeling increasingly ambivalent, but from whom they cannot escape for a brisk Alpine walk unless they live within 2km of Mont Blanc.

Instead, they will have overnight had to become educators, entertainers, housekeepers, hygiene experts, exercise motivators, and psychologists, simultaneously, without training or pay, and with only Joe Wicks for back up.

Good job we humans are, for the most part, so resilient.

Normally use your fingers to add up? Now you’re a maths teacher.

Know how to say beer in Spanish? Now you’re a modern languages tutor.

Does your idea of cooking always involve ‘ping!’? Now you’re the family chef.

Parenting stir crazy teens? Forget it. Not even a PhD in zoology will help with that.

Particularly hard hit are the disproportionately wealthy — those unfortunate individuals whose butlers and nannies have been forced to self isolate, rather than turn up daily to polish the silver and make the children disappear.

A heart-breaking Telegraph article reported how “Families are struggling to keep up with the demands of maintaining their estates, castles and city homes during the Covid-19 pandemic”, with one London butler agency, Polo & Tweed (this is not an April Fool, I double checked the date) saying they’re inundated with desperate wealthy people asking for advice on how to fold a ballgown or iron a top hat.

So lost in the dark forest of unfamiliar domestic skills are these poor rich people that the butler agency has had to set up online tutorials, where “clients can speak to trainers one-on-one for more tailored advice, such as how to clean their chandeliers.”

Guys, I’m feeling your pain.

Only this week I had to ask YouTube how to change a hoover bag.

It was humbling to realise how dependent I am on the friend who spends an hour a week keeping my house just the right side of bio-hazard in exchange for twenty quid.

I can’t imagine the wrench of losing a fleet of staff dedicated to squeezing my toothpaste and buffing my Aston Martin.

Thoughts and prayers. We’re all in this together.