The Daily Mail calls

Bit of a shock to wake up at 9.30am to find doorbell ringing with my long-suffering cleaner and a friend who I had invited to come and chant with me, clamouring to come in. Oh God, of course I knew clocks had gone forward but I hadn’t got round to changing my watch – it was actually 10.30am. Really, don’t these people ever sleep?!

Boyfriend on a Short Fuse was still snoozing; he has enough Prozac, Dequacaine, Valium and Night Nurse in his system to fell an army. Prozac, Dequacaine and Valium are OK but the Night Nurse has really done him in.

He still has a bad cold and I am desperately trying to keep him upright and functioning so he can fulfil his daily duties, the most important of which are taking the dogs out three times a day.

`You’re no use to me if you get ill!’ I shout sympathetically as I dole out his drugs.

`I never thought I would end up fifty-six and an unpaid dog walker’; he constantly grumbles as he assembles Nutty’s pram and clips on the two Tinies (bichon frises) leads.

Because of my early morning guest surge there was no time to feed the dogs. Nutty is rarely hungry first thing but the tinies are always starving. They are such lovely little dogs and accept that Nutty must come first when it comes to first dibs of the best food. They are still being fed well on Lily’s tinned food, the odd bit of raw chicken, eggs and left-overs. They will eat fresh apple and raw carrot as well as any cooked vegetable. I would like to give them a completely raw meat diet but it’s hard to get enough raw meat because it doesn’t go very far.

So, unlike Nutty, they will eat nearly everything, which is such a relief as poor Nutty does need quite a bit of coaxing and hand-feeding. I buy whole chickens from Daylesford and after they are roasted or poached I mix up with Lily’s chicken and spelt pouches. He prefers the latter to be honest, like Teflon-dad he was raised on tinned rubbish and turns his nose up at anything a bit new always going for anything processed.

……………………….

I had a strange email from an editor at The Daily Mail a few days ago.

Had I read about the engagement between Millie from Made in Chelsea and the Hackney rapper, Professor Green?

No I hadn’t, I didn’t admit. These luminaries only exist on the distant perimeters of my consciousness. (Shades of the judge who asked; `who are the Beatles?’ But we only have Freeview on the telly so I only watch news and property programmes and I only listen to Radio Two so I never hear rap music, only the rubbish that Jeremy Vine plays).

She went on to ask if I could write an article about the class differences between this happy pair, (I have in the past written endlessly about the thrill of dating a working-class boyfriend, aka Boyfriend on a Short Fuse).

My heart sank; I had a stinking cold and was trying to tempt Nutty with his chicken medley, so I really didn’t want to write about the same old, same old. And this Rapper from Hackney sounds quite posh, he probably went to Radley or something. And he is by all accounts very successful and not short of a few bob. So really the story of posh girl marries rich, successful man is as old as the hills. It doesn’t matter what class a man is, if he is rich these days all doors are open.

Unlike poor old Teflon-dad who in the fifties was refused an army commission because he wasn’t posh enough and made to feel lowest of the low by my baronet Grandfather because he was from the wrong side of the tracks. But saying that, I know more mixed race couples than I know mixed class couples. So class is still important when it comes to relationships.

Here's an excerpt from one of my articles about the delights of dating a working-class boyfriend.

`When the Sex in the City TV series first hit our screens in the late 1990s, like many of us I thought the gorgeous, powerful but ultimately unavailable Mr Big was the ideal man. But he and all those other romantic leads are nothing more than characters in a fantasy. It’s a great disappointment that Carrie ends up with Mr Big in the film—in the real world of course he would have ditched her for an 18-year-old Russian hooker/model. But maddeningly the myth is thus perpetuated for another generation.

It is a universal truth that men who are ‘good on paper’ just don’t live up to the promise in the flesh. Why aren’t girls taught essential facts like this in schools, along with how to wire a plug?

This is why I am so very appreciative that I am dating a builder with his treasure chest of vital life skills. Years of exposure to effete and impractical old Etonians, bankers and aristocrats have left me with breathless appreciation of his practical skills.  What use is it to me if my beau owns a county?  It’s far more useful if he can, like Boyfriend on a Short Fuse, assemble my flat pack filing cabinets from IKEA in under an hour. 

And while I don’t share his interest in football, the grunts and shrieks from the sofa when Arsenal play are far easier on the ear than the terrible shrieks one must endure at Glyndebourne. 

Luckily Boyfriend on a Short Fuse’s relatives are all in the building trade, so I now have access to tilers, wooden floor specialists, roofers, master carpenters - at sister-in-law rates. 

And these days I get driven around in style in a spacious white van rather than a cramped, jealousy-inspiring Porsche.  It’s all win, win, win. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I advise ladies looking for love this year to follow the example of a well-known soap star who whenever she was single reached for her Yellow Pages and organised for a series of quotes from builders, plasterers and plumbers, several of whom she went on to form lasting relationships with. Nobody seems to use the Yellow Pages any more but maybe it should stage a comeback as a lonely hearts directory.