In this creative response, writer and comms specialist Mo Ray invites 18th-century gossip columnist Lady Whistledown to lend her wit to the dramas of a ton in lockdown.

Although I’ve never met you, I feel like I know you quite well. If you were here today I’m sure you’d have a way for fans of your work, such as myself, to get in touch with you. I’m not sure what social media platform you’d prefer but I feel you’d have done very well during the blogger boom of 2006. Maybe you’d have still liked to have a column in a newspaper but I’m not sure if today’s members of the ton would peg you as a writer for the New Yorker, Times or National Enquirer but then… would you still be able to attain your anonymity that way? Maybe you’d have preferred to have your own newsletter like Roxane Gay that we could sign up to. Either way, I’d still read your work.

I digress.

Had you been here I’m sure you’d have already come across this article in the news about the Swiss ski resort quarantine fiasco. I’m happy to report I was not one of the 200 odd Britons who were said to be “fleeing” Verbier, but rather one of the few who stayed. I know, I know, we’re in a panasonic but I just couldn’t stay in Manchester a moment longer. Not after what happened.

Sitting in this very warm, quarantined Swiss hotel room albeit alone, starving, and without access to my biscuits cupboard is the best thing for me. Limited access to alcohol… and the balcony… and her. Just seen the announcement video on Instagram and thankfully my shock was not captured for the whole world to see, though she must’ve seen it… she definitely saw it.

You see Lady Whistledown, if the “bang bang my baby shot me down” WhatsApp group I’m in is anything to go by, I’d bet my entire overdraft that the events of that evening would have featured in your column had you been there that night. I surprised myself when I woke up in Harry’s room to find I’d apparently drunk-booked tickets to Switzerland after staying behind to help clean up the shattered glass and the wine stained walls that definitely need a new paint job - which to be fair, it was the least I could do.

It’s funny how slowly snow falls quickly.  

I’ve spent the better part of 3 hours watching it and I’m still unsure how something so small covers so much ground. And I know it sounds like I’m waffling - it’s because I am - BUT I think I’m ready to say the words out loud now. 

Here it goes...

It was me. I pushed her. And I’m not entirely sure it was an accident either. But what I will say is this: she bloody deserved it.

Yours forever,

Lotte