my Lifestyle Consultant

I can’t believe I for­got to tell you about her! My Lifestyle Con­sul­tant, yes you read cor­rect­ly. Would you believe I don’t even
know her name? She was mere­ly intro­duced to me with the above title, by some chick from Grosvenor Estates, our face­less land­lord, yes­ter­day in the midst of all the chaos. Door­bell rings, I trip over var­i­ous plumb­ing items and nar­row­ly miss knock­ing down the art installer walk­ing with screws in his mouth, and there, on my doorstep, are two very dressed-up Eng­lish ladies, one with a lit­tle cardy but­toned up over her lit­tle Peter Pan blouse and the oth­er all muf­fled in one of those coats with the fur­ry trim all around the col­lar and straight down to the hem. “Is this a bad time?” the Grosvenor lady asked, and I almost burst out laugh­ing. See­ing as how I prob­a­bly smelled bad from no hot water for a week, and had been out in the rain about twelve times and looked like a wet dog, not to men­tion the absolute mess the entire flat was in… “No! Of course not, come right in.”

“Well, Mrs Cur­ran, we are here mere­ly to offer our Invi­ta­tion To An Eas­i­er Life,” Fur­ry Lady said, and her words vir­tu­al­ly hung in the air like a con­ver­sa­tion bal­loon; to punc­tu­ate her speech she held out a lit­tle cream-col­ored book­let bound with a green rib­bon bow and bear­ing those very words, along with “Be Inspired To Make the Most of Our Ser­vice.” “I sup­pose to get our con­ver­sa­tion start­ed, I should ask you what pops into your head when you read this book­let, what lit­tle item, how­ev­er insignif­i­cant, presents itself as some­thing that would tru­ly enhance your life, Mrs Cur­ran?” “Well, you could start with heat. Or hot water, either one,” I said, and they wilt­ed vis­i­bly. So the Grosvenor Gady went off to solve all my plumb­ing prob­lems from her desk, while Concierge Lady and I sat on the sofa in the liv­ing room sur­round­ed by all Mark’s para­pher­na­lia, and I tried to think of ways to Enhance My Life through a concierge ser­vice. Did you know that expert assis­tance with all aspects of life is only a phone call away? They are will­ing to “tai­lor a bespoke ser­vice” around me and my house­hold. All this with­out hot water! Amaz­ing. They can arrange to have beau­ti­ful flow­ers deliv­ered to your home week­ly, find a reg­u­lar (not an irreg­u­lar, by any means) dog walk­er, and “source a coach for your golf swing, your ten­nis strokes, or your yoga pos­es.” But my per­son­al favorite has to be their earnest offer to “ensure the fridge is stocked when you return to Lon­don after a week­end away.” Now that’s ser­vice. How about the liquor cup­board? That’s what I real­ly need­ed yes­ter­day, a nice stiff shot of aqua­vit and a jump in the snow.

Night nan­nies! Per­son­al shop­pers! They’ll book a mas­sage for your vis­it­ing moth­er-in-law! And the tes­ti­mo­ni­als in the lit­tle book­let. “Who would have thought that I would order my car like a piz­za: a sin­gle phone call, a look at the options you sent, and a few days lat­er the car is deliv­ered, ful­ly insured and ready to go. How much eas­i­er can life get?”

I racked my brains try­ing to think up stuff to get them to do. Aside from inform­ing them that “source” is not, has nev­er been, and will nev­er be, a VERB.

I do think I might take her up on the offer to get some­body to go
shop­ping with me for some­thing to wear to John’s boss’s upcom­ing din­ner par­ty for twelve of his clos­est under­lings. Actu­al­ly I have no idea who else is going. All I know is his assis­tant emailed me a real­ly warm and fuzzy query about food aller­gies, and I said, “Tongue.” But I do have to find some­thing to wear, and all the stores
scare me. Concierge Lady assures me that I don’t look any­where near 51 and it should­n’t be hard to find some­thing suit­able, so maybe me and my shad­ow will mosey on over to Fen­wick­’s on Bond Street next week and pick up a lit­tle num­ber. And when I get home I expect a full fridge.