Meal kits are a recipe for mayhem

Caroline was pretty heroic during the first lockdown. She’s used to having no children to deal with between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., into which she crams her part-time job, food shopping, exercise classes, tennis lessons, dog walks and a hundred other things. But during our children’s three-month break from school they would appear in the kitchen at 1 p.m. and ask what was for lunch and, in spite of her other commitments, Caroline would always do her best to rustle something up. ‘I’m like Nigella Lawson on steroids,’ she said at the time.

But she has drawn the line at repeating this Stakhanovite labour during the third lockdown. ‘I can handle everything, but not the cooking,’ she said on the day that Boris announced it, with an air of finality. So the kids have been instructed to fend for themselves at lunchtime, with packets of bagels, ham, salami, lettuce and cheese left on the kitchen table, and we’re all mucking in when it comes to supper.