What to wear to the theatre of the absurd 

Life under COVID-19 is becoming like one of those top-and-tail books for toddlers, where each page is cut in half and you flip them back and forth to make funny pictures. Politics has always been a bit like that, writes Verona Burgess. 

It is a common visual trope: the top half of a newsreader/executive/cabinet minister dressed in a smart suit and, under the desk, track pants with running shoes. Or pyjama bottoms.

Now it has become the norm in Zoomland, along with the child bursting into the study during a parent’s vital meeting, cats prancing across the desk or backdrops of messy kitchens that, frankly, don’t spark joy.

Curiously, we have yet to see a top half of lulu lemon and a bottom half of, say, a pencil skirt and vertiginous Jimmy Choos.