The Side-Eye on letting live

Brooklyn Beckham is getting married. She’s 25, he’s 21, her parents are billionaire Trump supporters and his are… well, you know perfectly well who they are. The young lovers have been in lockdown together for months and recently announced their engagement to the world. And the world responded with a resounding, spluttering raspberry of disbelief and incredulity. You can place real bets on how many years it will last, how many months too. It seems like everyone has an opinion on this couple’s chances of long-lasting love and no-one thinks it’s a goer.

The reasons for our pooh-poohing of this particular love story are pretty clear. He’s a spoilt brat who lucked his way into a photography career and a spectacular own goal with a coffee table book featuring out-of-focus pictures of elephants’ backsides with inane captions. Brooklyn Beckham has never had to do a day’s work in his life (and no, ‘modelling’ and ‘partying’ do not count) and it’s fair to say that his ‘soulmate’ Nicole Peltz has never had to ask if you want fries with that either. They’re smug, disgustingly rich and totally deluded if they think that nine months of dating is long enough to know their own minds. We should totally hate on them and laugh at them and… oh. Or maybe we should vaguely wish them well, think that $350k doesn’t buy you as much engagement ring as you’d think and get back to our own lives.

After all, who’d be a Beckham? Imagine a life where no-one tells you that maybe you need to keep learning your trade before over-reaching with a publication that’s going to become a byword for vacuous entitlement. Modelling and partying do not a career make, but it seems unlikely that either of them were likely candidates for the KMPG graduate scheme. Imagine photographers chasing you, hangers-on leeching off you and the mum of a kid in your class that you never liked selling stories about your ‘dark side’ to the newspapers. Imagine everyone remembering, every time you introduce yourself, that your name is a handy reminder of where your parents shagged and conceived you. What chance does any child of a high-profile or super-wealthy family have to make normal life choices?

Maybe their marriage won’t last, and maybe it will last forever – after all VB and David got together young and are still going strong. Nine months is enough to grow a whole new person, so who’s to say that it isn’t long enough to decide who you want to spend your life with? Spending lockdown with anyone – albeit we can assume in gloriously luxurious circumstances – has been a merciless test of a relationship. If three months of groundhog days in grey marl sweatpants leads you to the point of proposal, rather than attempting a Shawshank-style breakout, then good luck.

As the COVID hurricane sets us down, not quite where we were before, most of us have realised that what needs to change – or stay the same – is less about the external world and more about the internal. A better work-life balance, a kinder relationship, a hall carpet that doesn’t make your heart sink every time you come down the stairs – these are the things that actually matter and truly impact our lives. Real relationships and meaningful connections, personal reflections. Growth and acknowledging that we have more learning to do.

Of course, that’s not to say that there’s no room for lighthearted stuff too, and celebrity marital news is top fodder for those moments when you raise your eyes from ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ and cast about for inane entertainment. So if you find yourself ruminating on the odds of Brooklyn and Nicole going the distance, keep it to yourself. Instead, spare a thought for how you’re going to feel about the possibility of Granny Posh and Grandad David - really, really old – and then move on.

Jennifer Coyle, July 2020.