The Sandwich

My preoccupation with the government’s inability to contemplate the possibility that people who aren’t cohabiting might still want to be able to have sex under lockdown is well documented here and here. In fact just the other day I was perusing the rules yet again (though not for sex-related reasons) and discovered a hitherto unnoticed loophole. If you are living in a household with other adults, one of you is allowed to form a support bubble with someone from another household, as long as none of the other people you live with have done so. Which means that one of the three single women that make up my household could have been having sex all along. How we would have chosen which one of us gets to shag, while maintaining household harmony, is another matter. Setting up a cleaning rota was complicated enough. However, it turns out that you can change your support bubble, as long as you wait ten days in between people. Which means that all this time, each of us could have been having sex once a month. At the beginning of lockdown I would have considered this parsimonious. One year in, it looks positively abundant. Indeed, some married couples of my acquaintance would consider it unnecessarily generous.

Anyway given all of this, when I was approached by a friend to write a short film for him to direct, it was perhaps no surprise that I chose the subject of how different people cope with sex under lockdown. The film was an experiment, zero budget, and written, rehearsed, shot and edited in four weeks. Working under lockdown conditions, the entire project was realised over Zoom. The results surpassed all my expectations - I’m incredibly proud of it, and thrilled to have had the chance to work with such a great team. Big love to director Dominic Morgan, actors Laurie Delaney, Simon Haines, Angela Harvey, Samantha Sherratt and Loclann O’Grady, who also wrote and performed the outro music, and our editor Reuben Williams.

Given the subject matter, the film is unsuitable for children, and as for my parents and other relatives……………… you have been warned!