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Lockdown in the lives of Giles and Mary: five hours of TV a day and too many arguments to count

Giles and Mary shot to fame in Channel 4's Gogglebox - John Lawrence/The Telegraph 
Giles and Mary shot to fame in Channel 4's Gogglebox - John Lawrence/The Telegraph

Has it really been a year since the word and the concept of “lockdown” entered the national vocabulary? A full 12 months have passed during which all the little everyday things we took for granted were suddenly banned.

It seems extraordinary, but somehow Britain adapted, and I think we should be rather proud of ourselves. We have discovered how to make do and put up with privations that would have previously been unthinkable; who could have guessed that lunching with friends, visiting family members or chatting in the supermarket would become illegal?

I had always assumed that I would be fine “in prison”, as I have so much reading to catch up on – but one thing I’ve learnt about myself is that I am actually dependent on the real-life company of others. Phones and Zoom just aren’t the same as face-to-face conversations.

I’ve been left feeling like a plant that needs watering, with the watering a metaphor for human interaction. I miss church, too.

What has also struck me rather forcibly is the truth of the John Donne poem No Man Is an Island, because no matter how well things are going for me and how few of my actual friends have died so far, I have felt, on a subatomic level, the grief and worry of my fellow Britons.

All the country has really had to keep us sane – or sane-ish – over the past year is television; already a central part of mine and my husband Giles’s lives due to our being on Gogglebox for the past six years.

'Lockdowns Two and Three have been energy-sapping... I am more or less in zombie mode now' - Elizabeth Vickers
'Lockdowns Two and Three have been energy-sapping... I am more or less in zombie mode now' - Elizabeth Vickers

I now watch about five hours a day – previously it was two. I also spend two hours listening to Audible books, then two hours tuned into the radio, while I wander about, trying in vain to stem the tide of squalor that Giles trails in from the garden.

The truth is that Giles and I really loved Lockdown One. Our adult daughters were fellow captives, it was good weather, the skies and roads went silent and there was a more manageable amount of things to do and people to see – ie, no one. It felt like open prison but with comfy beds, nice food and best of all, the dog.

But Lockdowns Two and Three have been energy-sapping. I’ve got about 60 per cent of the get-up-and-go that I used to have and yet I’ve had much more sleep and much less to do. When people ask me how I am, I have to think before I answer.

Usually I say “I can’t complain”, but I am more or less in zombie mode now. If I want to concentrate on reading something complex I have to set an alarm on my iPhone for 15 minutes, then breathe a sigh of relief when it goes off and tackle something mindless, such as ironing. Which, as Kirstie Allsopp recently pointed out, can be a soothing and satisfying.

Neither of us has yet been struck down and thankfully we have been offered jabs this week, but Giles is such a hypochondriac that he’s spent most of his adult life going for tests and being declared fit and well.

On his most recent visit, having returned with yet another clean bill of health, I rang to ask the doctor for another appointment, as I said I was sure there must be something wrong with him, as he achieves so little.

The receptionist said there were no appointments but that I could write to the GP with any concerns, so I started firing off a letter: “Alongside his hobby, gardening, Giles achieves nothing each day except loading and unloading the dishwasher about three times, cooking three meals a day and serving them, taking the dog out three times a day, chopping the logs and lighting the fires and driving us wherever we need to go…”

And then the penny dropped that he’s busier than he looks, so I stopped. The arguing has remained steady over all the lockdown, however. Giles is not allowed to knock on the kitchen ceiling (the bathroom is above it) to ask what I am doing in there but he still does.

He is not permitted to shout from whatever room he is in instead of coming to the room we are in to ask for what he wants, eg, “Where is the coffee?”, meaning I have to shout back “In the place where it’s kept”, but he refuses to comply.

And the shouting ratchets up the incivility-ometer and makes everyone tetchy.

Giles is not allowed to block doorways as we approach them, because he has a habit of insinuating his own bulk into the doorframe saying “Ask nicely” as we try to get past, which is infuriating. But, being Giles, he just keeps on doing it.

As far as I know, the only thing he finds annoying about me is that I have too many heaters on. He also doesn’t like me chatting on the phone. Having said that, we have had an ongoing low‑grade dispute over food.

Giles is the only one who drives, so he went out and bought “emergency rations” of tins of things none of us like, such as baked beans, tomato soup and rice pudding. When we protested, he insisted we eat these things “as a rehearsal for being penniless”. As a result, I was forced to go against my principles and patronise Amazon Grocery.

Yet despite extolling the virtues of his prepper hoard, Giles tucks into all the nice things I buy because, he says, “as the quartermaster” he can see that it would be more sensible to hold back on the tinned food – just in case.

During lockdown, Gogglebox filming has been a real highlight. For a start it meant we had a reason to actually sit down together. The production team don’t come every week – it’s like the school term with long breaks in the summer and at Christmas. But when they do, the most charming people appear.

They are always laughing, which makes us think we must be funny, rather than tragic. It’s a joy to have them here – correction – have them outside filming, socially distant, from a van.

My favourite lockdown viewing is the French-language Netflix series Call My Agent! The BBC's The Serpent was also first-rate. Giles and I bonded over it because we knew idiotic people who went on the hippie trail and came back swaggering with spiritual superiority. We were too young to realise it was all half-baked and bogus and this reassured us we hadn’t missed out on anything.

A saving grace of lockdown has been that we know everyone is in the same boat and there was nothing to miss out on.

With the announcement of a roadmap, things will be opening up soon. Part of me is anxious about the easings; I’ve become slightly institutionalised.

This is the worst year most people under the age of 80 have lived through. But I feel certain that when it ends, the suffering will have served us well.

Before the pandemic we were far too complacent. After it, I hope we will have a fresh appreciation of others which, we now realise, is what makes life worth living.

Gogglebox returns on Fridays at 9pm on Channel 4