Digested week: The harrowing backstory to the John Lewis Christmas ad | Emma Brockes

All eyes on America as a nation decides, but this week Brits faced an equally large question: namely, how do we feel about this year’s John Lewis Christmas ad? It’s a confusing one. On the one hand, high off her flinty brilliance in six seasons of Slow Horses, Kristin Scott Thomas is a welcome addition to any production and I could watch her waft around a big house without the pretext of either John Lewis or Christmas.

On the other hand, it’s all a bit odd. The advert’s much discussed storyline in which Scott Thomas’s daughter and son-in-law come to the door with their owl-eyed children doesn’t exactly emanate Christmas spirit, even as the “before” in a before-and-after story.

Why does the grandma appear to have no relationship with her grandkids? Has there been a massive fight in the family? If there has, is it about new inheritance tax rules and how they might push Christmas gift-giving more in the direction of money – deed transfer, not 20 quid in an envelope – over presents? Has the Scott Thomas character raised the possibility that she doesn’t trust her family to look out for her if she puts her house in their name, and have they shot back, huffily: “That’s ridiculous, mother, we’d always do right by you, do you really want us to give 40% of your estate to HMRC when there’s a perfectly sensible way around it?” And has she replied, coldly: “Why would I care, I won’t be here.” To which have they replied, in a howl of protest: “We think you’re being very selfish.”

Has she said to them: “Look, I’m already contributing substantially to the school fees after the 20% VAT hike, what more do you want from me?” To which have they replied: “Fine, we’ll pull the kids out of private and send them to state school, but we’ll need money for therapists, so can you please put the house in our name?” To which has she replied, in a deadly escalation: “Vote Reform then if you feel so strongly about inheritance tax,” to which have they replied, absolutely screaming at this point: “How very dare you, we’re on the left!”

To which has she snorted: “Well, I know for a fact that he – pointing to her son-in-law – voted for David Cameron at least once,” to which has her daughter exploded: “Ohmigod, says the woman who voted for Brexit!” At this point has her son-in-law walked quietly over to the wall and mimed beating his head against it? Does she even want them there for Christmas? Is that why the kids are so sullen? Is this who we are as a people now and has it fallen to John Lewis to tell us?

Tuesday

A rigorous workout for our nerves, as we look towards the US midterms and try to avoid tempting fate by saying words like “landslide”, “got this”, or “win” ahead of time. For reasons of self-preservation, my assumption is that Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings will somehow resolve themselves at the 11th hour and hand us a fudge of a result, allowing him to stagger on.

This anticipatory hedge is bolstered by British TV news hacks who, almost to a person, manage to find the most lunatic anomalies in any voter set to share with the viewers back home. A Texan of Mexican origin who has lost family members to brutal deportation raids by ICE but still intends to vote for Trump? Tick. A well-to-do family appalled by Elon Musk’s efforts to buy the election and stick a huge datacentre next to their house, but for whom the top voting priority is the question of gender identity and will be voting for Trump, too? Yup. A sense of Americans-say-the-funniest-things animating most foreign reporting? That, too.

Wednesday

King Charles visits the Caribbean and issues a regret-without-liability statement around Britain’s role in the slave trade, but it’s his hissy fit at not having an umbrella that catches my eye. This petulant side to the king is one we haven’t seen in full glory since his meltdown, four years ago, over a leaky fountain pen at a signing ceremony, and I couldn’t enjoy it more.

Then, Charles popped out of his chair, paced the room irritably and snapped, “I can’t bear this bloody thing! Every stinking time!” while Camilla staunched the flow of ink and calmly got on with her own signing. In this week’s incident, the king, caught in a sudden downpour at an outside ceremony in Antigua, gesticulates wildly and with a furious stream of what we might assume to be invective, looks sharply around for someone to hand him an umbrella. Camilla, meanwhile, grips her own umbrella and beetles off, stage right, leaving her other half to compose himself and remind the rest of us of the endearing normalcy of royalty – or how our social order enables and forgives adult tantrums, depending on one’s view.

Thursday

New threshold crossed! For the first time the word of the year from one of the big dictionaries is a word I haven’t encountered. I don’t know what this means but it’s probably not good. Either that, or “mogging” isn’t quite as widely used as Collins suggests. Apparently it’s a term taken from bodybuilding and applied to people one-upping each other on the internet, as in, per the dictionary’s explanation, “your friend’s sourdough mogs the loaf you spent all weekend proving”.

I mean – and I know this is what happens when you age out of exposure to new idioms – it sounds totally made up to me, like something from an old episode of Brass Eye, specifically the one about deprived youths loading pensioners into shopping trolleys and “git-surfing” them round the estate.

Friday

Almost a week on from Martha Stewart’s disastrous choice of Halloween costume and it’s worth a revisit to remind us just how enjoyably poor her decision-making was. After dressing as a homeless person with a sign around her neck reading “I am hungry. Please help!” the 85-year-old had to apologise, although you could tell she wasn’t happy about it and later came up with the claim that she had only worn it because someone spilled chocolate on her “other” costume. Hilariously unconvincing from Martha, and I couldn’t love her more.

Digested week in pictures