Locking Down Appearances
Written in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic, how would Mrs Bucket deal with the new normal?
- Hyacinth hosts a candlelight supper over Zoom. Five minutes into the call all fifteen guests mysteriously suffer connection problems and drop off. Hyacinth calls BT and asks them to put her guests on high-priority internet lines.
- Emmet and Elizabeth make remarkable progress on their nerves during the period when they are legally unable to be invited for coffee. All progress is undone during a summer of socially distanced lunchtime picnics in the garden. Elizabeth spills coffee on a prizewinning rose.
- Daisy looks forward to weeks and weeks at home with Onslow. Onslow says he’s putting himself on furlough.
- Rose’s current gentleman friend gets a PPE contract. He owns a garden centre.
- Mrs Councillor Nugent tries to mobilise an anti-lockdown movement in the town but the movement implodes when Hyacinth keenly volunteers to help out, since the lockdown is making it very difficult to visit her country retreat (an AirBnB on the outskirts of Bristol that she gets a loyalty discount on).
- The Vicar offers the church hall as a testing centre, but his wife vetos the idea on the presumption there would be too many young nurses present. She changes her mind when told it would be staffed by squaddies.
- Daddy tries to enlist in the Home Guard, since Hitler is clearly invading.
- Richard teaches himself how to code. He makes a series of mini games featuring a terrifying monster that wears hideous dresses and shrieks at you unexpectedly.
- Sheridan and his friend Tarquin are stuck in Amsterdam, having been backpacking there when the pandemic struck. Richard’s credit card is very glad that they are happy to share a hotel room. Hyacinth tells them to complain about the fact that they mysteriously keep ending up with a double room rather than a twin.