Alexandra Shulman’s notebook: The last thing kids want is life returning to ‘normal’ 

Our 13-year-old cat Coco clearly knows something is up. Her next-door neighbour Pumpkin, has gone AWOL (his owners having taking him out of London) and, more unusually, she can see that we are around all the time.

Last week, an animal psychologist reported that many dogs are enjoying life in lockdown because they are getting so much human attention. 

The problem, he suggests, is that they will suffer when normality resumes and their owners have to go out and get on with lives rather than pad around their homes, stroking them.

As a nation of animal-lovers, I am sure we are concerned about our pets’ potential separation anxiety, but the real issue here is going to be our children.

If our dogs are going to have problems readjusting, what about all the children who have become used to their parents suddenly being there 24/7?

Not just after-school and the evenings when they weren’t going to the pub or seeing friends, but there all the time; from breakfast to supper, teaching them schoolwork and playing with them without sharing any of this with the part-time help of a grandparent, au pair or after-school helper.

As a divorced mother who worked full-time throughout my son’s childhood, I know what a lot of thought and care goes into making your children able to deal with your absence. 

You don’t just blithely race off to the office in your Jimmy Choos, eager to get your hands on a cappuccino and catch up on the previous night’s gossip.

You don’t step carelessly into a child-free world. You work jolly hard to make them understand that your absence is something that is for both their and your benefit and to make it clear that they are your first priority, even though it might not sometimes appear that way to them.

When I worked at Vogue, my child apparently (and of course I have blanked this memory) used to chant ‘I hate, hate, hate that magazine’ with a frequency other children might have used to sing ‘ring a-ring-a-roses’.

And when tiny, he would often weep as I set off for work leaving him in the care of one of our many wonderful young nannies.

Sometimes I would bend down to the front door and listen through the letterbox in the hope that the crying would stop. Almost always it did, as soon as I was out of sight. His, that is. My weeping and sense of guilt carried on a little longer.

But I was driven by knowing that, through working, I was providing him with the comfortable life he had. When holidays ended, it was always hard for both of us to accept the separation after days when we had been together from morning to night.

So these through-the-looking-glass times when parents are working from home, trying with tremendous difficulty to balance work with the demands not only of home-schooling but of children who, filled with pleasure at having their parents around, want their attention every second, will have undermined all that previous acceptance of the status quo. 

When it’s time to go back to work and back to school, and parent/ child time reverts to its more snatched quality, there’s going to be a painful reawakening to deal with for everyone.

Inevitable end of a polka-dotted parody

When Cath Kidston launched her brand in the early 1990s from a little shop in Holland Park, it was a word-of-mouth success.

We all loved her rubberised fabric, so perfect and cheery for children’s mealtimes, the pastel plimsolls, rose-printed cottons and the one-off vintage bits and pieces she stocked there.

Once it became hugely successful, it lost that treasure-trove feeling and sense of individuality. And once Kidston sold it on and it was rolled out across the world, the brand became a parody of its polka-dotted self.

Last week it permanently closed all 60 UK stores – a brutal lesson for all the investors who, in their eagerness to make a fortune, forget what the core appeal of something is in the first place.

300 snacks – and no one to eat them

Last week my book Clothes And Other Things That Matter was published.

There were weeks of festivals and talks scheduled. There was to have been a party – my freezer is still housing the 300 miniature croque monsieurs I was pleased with myself for sourcing.

In this extraordinary April weather, we would have been able to use the garden and I would have been surrounded by friends and family.

Instead I celebrated the launch day with a drink with my publishers over Zoom and by cooking some spaghetti for myself and David.

It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, but our ambitions have changed. If you’d told me a month ago that all the planned activity was going to be cancelled, I would have been devastated.

Now, although I’m still desperate for the book to sell, my chief hope is that none of us get severely sick and that someone comes up with a plan to get our lives back on track in the foreseeable future.

We’ll never forgive the Covid cowboys

When we get out the other end of this, we’re all going to remember the businesses who treated us well. And those that didn’t.

At present, my monthly membership of Soho House is being put on a tab that can be spent when they are back open, or on their products right now.

So last week I spent the cash on some wine glasses which arrived, beautifully packaged, within a couple of days.

Contrast this to British Airways which currently has the cash from eight flights from our household (a substantial sum of money) and who are hiding behind an impenetrable website system that eventually only allows you to get what they want (a voucher to be spent in the future), not what you want (a refund, right now).

Previously I have always been loyal to the ‘world’s favourite airline’ – after this I very much doubt it.