WHO needs lots of homes anyway? How would you ever remember where your favourite boots were?
In among the public wranglings between Johnny Depp and his manager, we’ve learned some eye-watering facts about how the other half spends their millions, including Depp’s very gluggable £24,000 a month on wine for a start.
Yo ho ho, as Captain Sparrow might say. Hic.
But as well as the yacht, the staff, the private plane, the £8million worth of art, Johnny Depp also has fourteen homes. Fourteen…
How does he get round them all? Does he have a careful rota of which house when? Or if it’s all done on a whim of the moment, do some of the houses languish unloved and if so, does he miss them?
The best thing about home – the sort of home that most of us have - is its effortlessness. You come in, relax, breathe easy, everything around is comfortable and familiar. Your clothes, books, music waiting for you, your slippers where you left them, your favourite mug, pillows and bed just as you like it. Shut the door on the world and forget about it.
But if you’re ricocheting between fourteen houses – not to mention the yacht – how do you remember where everything is, or even were you are? Every night you’ll have to adjust to sunrise through a different window, different clothes in different wardrobes. And that’s after you’ve found your way to different loos, worked out different showers and waved to different neighbours.
I don’t suppose Johnny Depp has to worry himself about the different dustbin days or recycling rules, but you get the picture. More homes equals more confusion.
More homes mean more stuff to worry about, more things to remember. Life must be a constant check-list. You can never truly be a local. You’ll always be a visitor, an outsider.
Once you have fourteen homes then really, you have no home at all. Nowhere that instantly wraps you around with the comfort of familiarity. Unsettling. You’d need consolation.
Ah! Maybe that’s why Johnny Depp has to spend so much on wine…
AFTER a young French woman was spotted apparently sharing Nigel Farage’s home, his wife, Kirsten, told the media that he’d actually moved out of the marital home some time ago as their marriage was over and that, basically, it was nobody else’s business.
Fair enough. Farage was regularly seen with a pint and cigarette, but rarely treated his family as political accessories. His wife refused to play the adoring spouse either – none of that public hand-holding or those sick-making “Isn’t he wonderful!” speeches.
And we’ve probably seen more pictures of Nigel with Donald Trump than with his children as he’s kept them out of the limelight.
So even if you disagree profoundly with his politics – as I do – you have to respect him for refusing to play the public happy families game.
Meanwhile, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez is getting indignant about an invitation to an International Women’s Day event that was addressed to her as Mrs Clegg.
But if she weren’t married to former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, would any of us have even heard of her?
BAD weather in Spain means we’re running out of lettuces, courgettes, broccoli and such like.
A generation ago the idea of strawberries at Christmas or green beans in January was positively bizarre. Yes, there was something wonderful about the very first lettuce or small sweet carrots from the garden after a winter of hacking at muddy, wormy potatoes or rock hard swedes. But, although I love my roots, frankly, I also love being able to buy easy green veg all the year round.
Some stores are now rationing us to a maximum of three lettuces each. Who needs more than three anyway?
Apparently we throw away around half of all the lettuce we buy. So you could just limit yourself to one a week – and then share it with a friend.
TALKING of throwing food away – a lot of our 7 million tonne food waste comes from stuff we throw out from our freezer. So this year I’ve done it again – gone through all of January without buying food, apart from some fruit and veg. (But no lettuce.)
Seven weeks without a proper food shop is a good discipline. As well as using up the mountain of food I bought for Christmas – my excuse was I had no idea how many people would be there for how long – I’ve explored the remoter frost-covered corners of the freezer, not seen this time last year and used some of those tins and packets lurking so long at the back of the cupboard that I hardly noticed them anymore.
(But I still haven’t used my bottle of rose water. What was I going to use that for?)
Some meals were a bit odd, others a bit basic but we’ve survived and saved a lot of waste and a modest amount of money.
Of course, now I’ve done all that and the cupboards are bare, we’ll probably get snowed in for a week…
AN unmarried woman has won the right to her late partner’s pension. She had to go to court to prove it – they’d been together ten years, were engaged and had bought a house together.
The irony was that she needn’t have gone to court at all. Her late partner’s employers allowed for unmarried partners to have pension rights – as long as they filled in the right form, which he hadn’t done.
Moral of this story: if you want what’s yours, for goodness’ sake do the paperwork…
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here