Here we are in a brand-new sparkly year, all trying to improve ourselves. What will Sloanes be struggling to give up/take up in 2018?
One minute you’re marching through the bracken on a shoot with someone thoughtfully handing you a hip flask for a quick slug of sherry to help warm your icy soul – the next, you’re back at work, in a morning meeting and someone has suggested a cup of tea. Before you know it, you’ve piped up – ‘I’d rather have a sherry, actually’ – and everyone is staring at you, no one is laughing and someone has whispered, ‘Dry January’, but you don’t know what that means.
Enough of the wriggling and the fighting and the dominating of space and the wheezing and squeaking and twitching and barking suddenly for no reason, giving you a cardiac arrest in the middle of the night. One of them has even forced his way INTO the bed because you are weak and he looks at you with those eyes, and now the others are jealous and it’s all getting much too hot – so, sorry, chaps, but you’re all out of here. BASKET. NOW. Said no Sloane ever.
Your father may ask you if you’ve been depressed or under some kind of unreasonable pressure at work. Your mother may get a bit tearful. Bear in mind that Sloane parents will not understand this choice. Being a vegan means no McDonald’s bingeing while hungover or game pies. Or butter on your toast. Or bacon. No, not even just once a week.
That’s it. Not going to stand freezing to death on a smoking terrace any more. Filthy habit. Totally irrelevant that this is how your flatmate met her now husband, which is why you’re having to move out. Totally irrelevant that now you’ve given up smoking you’re literally left on your own sitting at a table four times a night, because everyone has swanned outside to the smoking terrace to fall in love with each other. Irrelevant that you are being accused of being anti-social and now can’t stop crying.
Isn’t this jolly. Makes good presents. Everyone loves things that are homemade. Ignore the burnt bits of sugar. And yes, perhaps there is too much vinegar in that one. Wait, has it really welded your teeth together or are you joking?
The thing about Dandelion is that he really understands me. He doesn’t criticise my shoes, like my mother, or make passive-aggressive remarks about my lack of ambition, like my boss. Dandelion would never expect me to go Dutch on a date or ask to borrow my car and then give it back covered in mud and dog hair. It is important to remember that he is just a horse, though, and he can’t help me go through Farrow & Ball colour charts for the refurb on my flat or discuss where we are in the Brexit negotiations. He’s just a horse… a horse… a (very intelligent, sensitive, noble, perfect and nicer than any human I have ever met or will ever meet and stopping me from forming proper relationships) horse.