The first I realised there was a problem was a text from my son Sam. He’d temporarily moved back into our London house while we were away in Greece and said the place was ‘a nightmare’ – he was being horribly bitten by something.
Initially I uncharitably thought Sam’s being a hypochondriac. But then he sent me a picture of his leg and it was indeed covered in nasty red marks. There was no avoiding the fact that, while we’d been away, our home had been silently invaded by fleas.
Our adored cat Coco had died on the second day of our 11-day break, which was heartbreaking and, if I’m honest I’d noticed some little black spots in the area where she’d started to sleep, but decided to ignore them. Big mistake.
The whole house, save thankfully our bedroom, was now infested with fleas – as Sam discovered by walking around wearing white socks, the easier to spot them jumping on to his legs. I was surprised he thought of the white socks but, as he explained, ‘this is not my first rodeo’.
Plan A was for Sam to rush out for toxic flea spray and vacuum the house but, as the bites increased, it was clear a more dramatic intervention was needed. After phoning around several pest control places offering a wide range of treatments (some costing as much as £800), he plumped for a £350 purge.
A couple of hours later Rony arrived bearing a huge canister of Cimetrol Super Ew – a noxious substance professionals use to exterminate bed bugs and other crawling insects – and proceeded to fumigate the whole house, mattresses included. It was the third house in West London the company had purged of fleas that day, apparently.
He stood in the living room with its thick pile Moroccan rugs and soft sofas and asked my son where he thought the fleas were, only for several to jump on his sleeve.
Then the house had to be left empty for three hours – and nothing cleaned for seven days.
Alexandra Shulman’s adored cat Coco died while she was on holiday – and she returned to discover nearly her entire house infested with fleas
It was always going to be horrible coming back to a home that was empty of our beloved cat, but the flea invasion made it all the more grim. All the floors were covered in a sticky toxic layer, pooling in small rivulets.
My son had stuffed every piece of bed linen and soft fabric into huge bin liners to be washed, while all the duvets and pillows needed to be tumbled dried on a high heat. Meanwhile, the white painted floorboards were speckled with tiny flecks of flea blood.
Even worse, the whole thing has to be done again in a fortnight.
There is a one-stop heat treatment available at a cost of £1,800, but this involves heating the whole house to 60C and takes between five and eight hours. And it doesn’t work in the bathroom or kitchen. So that was a no brainer. The Cimetrol spray gun it was.
Even as I write this, I feel a slight itch in my hair. I only hope it’s not some wretched fleas who’ve managed to escape extermination, but simply the power of auto suggestion.
Purging her house of the invaders cost Alexandra £350 – and the building was evacuated for three hours
Gadgets make sleep even more stressful
The new obsession, promoted by popular health-monitoring gadgets such as Oura Rings, is deep sleep. No longer is it enough to get eight hours of shut-eye, you must also get approximately 70 minutes of the deepest stage of sleep when your brain focuses on physical repair and boosts memory function.
At supper the other night, two friends were freaking out about their deep sleep stats. One was worried not only that she couldn’t fall asleep in the first place but that, when she did, she was only getting 14 minutes of deep sleep.
I suggested the anxiety over her ring reading might be causing the problem. If she ditched the ring, she might feel more relaxed.
I was given an Oura Ring last year and whenever I bothered to check my sleep ratings, they were pretty ghastly. After a few months I gave it up. After all what was the point of getting stressed over a health monitor, when it couldn’t even predict the cancer I was diagnosed with?
So stylish Giorgio didn’t follow trends
With the death of Giorgio Armani on Thursday, we lost one of the last great fashion titans. He was one of only a handful of eponymous brand founders still in complete control of their companies. And it’s worth remembering that he was massively successful by sticking rigidly to his own aesthetic and steadfastly refusing to follow the trends of the moment.
In contrast, other houses have had a carousel of creative directors with varying degrees of success.
At last week’s Venice Film Festival, Dario Vitale, the new designer in charge of Versace after Donatella Versace was ousted in March, gave us a disastrous preview of what lies ahead. Instead of the high voltage glam Versace is known for, he produced several low key gloomy looks for Julia Roberts that had nothing to do with the Italian fashion house’s trademark pizazz.
Thankfully Armani will never have to see someone mess around with his legacy.
OK, that’s enough about dull fat jabs
If I never hear another word about fat jabs, I’ll be absolutely delighted. Not only do these jabs mean that those of us who chose not to indulge, are now looking substantially chubbier than those in thrall to their injections, but it’s become an intensely boring subject.
We know they make you lose weight, we know that regular users are thrilled with their slimline physique, we know that prices are rising as pounds are being lost. But enough already. There is nothing left to say.