POLICE were called to a Le Creuset warehouse sale at the weekend as owners of Cockapoos threatened to turn tastefully ugly. These are the other riots waiting to happen:
A Sally Rooney signing
The author herself, the one person who has successfully captured the aching blandness of comfortable lives, is doing a signing. In an independent bookshop, naturally. But tickets are limited and readers are circling, all breathless to tell her she reflected their feelings of listless infidelity so gracefully. A fight ensures. Torn Lululemon litters the streets.
The scramble for places at grammar school
The local grammar school, which has such good Oxbridge links it’s really better than going private, announces it does not have enough places for every detached home in catchment. Some pupils, regardless of potential, will be cast out. The ensuing uprising sees lawyers and doctors fighting tooth and claw. The school is burned down.
The opening of a Gail’s bakery
So minimalist in branding, the apostrophe delicately employed, and likely to add between £10,000-£20,000 to the value of your house. How could anyone not be there on opening day? When they cannot meet demand for Soho buns and the queue turns into a crazed mob of looters? The borekitas are still delicious, even with a modicum of broken glass.
A Pedro Almodóvar film festival
The arthouse cinema is holding a festival of Spain’s most transgressive filmmaker. You must be there. You’ve seen his entire oeuvre, after all. Half of these so-called cineastes aren’t even familiar with his early shorts. But they get in, just because they’ve queued since 8am? Nuh-huh. You come back in the Audi Q5 and drive it into the foyer.
The opportunity to talk about how talented your children are at a dinner party
Larissa is a demon on the French horn, and Lance is so talented a linguist he could be a translator at the UN even though he’s five. But will any of these bores stop barking about their own prodigies long enough for you to get a word in? Desperate, you discharge a pistol into the John Lewis chandelier. Pandemonium ensues.
Waitrose, 6am, December 23rd
Only the common shop on Christmas Eve, The sensible stock up the day before and rise bloody early to do it, only to find every other Boden clone has the same idea. The aisles are a rampage of privilege with pannetone used as clubs. But it’s worth the lacerations and a minor charge of affray to make a perfectly lovely Christmas.
