Why I want to be Meghan Markle, with all my heart

This exhausted writer wants to trade her domestic chaos for Meghan Markle's world of white linen, beekeeping and hand-tempered Belgian chocolate.

Rose petals ready for scattering

Look, I know many, many of you do not like her, but I do not care: I want to be Meghan Markle.

I do, with all my heart.

I have just watched some of Season Two of With Love, Meghan and while I know – because I have the internet – that this woman seems to bring out extremely high levels of vitriol in many people, I just can’t join in the online pile-on.

This is for two reasons.

Number one, as a rule, I never want to join any sort of online pile-on, and two, I want to be her. I do. With all my heart.

To be honest, I am ending this year so tired I can barely lift my head, I have not finished any of the jobs I was meant to do, I feel like I finish one domestic task only to start another, when all I really want to do is sprinkle some rose petals over a persimmon salad.

In fact, I want to spend my whole life just sprinkling petals on things. I don’t care what.

I want to float around my house wearing white linen and gold hoop earrings. I want to smell like a scented candle, and I want one of those baskets that drape over your arm and then fill it with flowers I have just snipped from my own garden with a pair of attractive scissors.

And I want bees. I do. I want bees and my own beehives and a funny little man who looks like a garden gnome to help me take care of them (you will have to watch the show to see what I mean). I want to wear one of those beekeeper suits that makes me look like I have just come home from walking on the moon, only more stylish.

And I want a Le Creuset saucepan, godammit.

In short, and to bastardise the When Harry Met Sally line, I want what Meghan’s having. All of it.

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

And it seems to me this is actually achievable. I believe that I can at least have a version of Meghan’s lifestyle.

The Temu version, to be fair, but who cares?

Because I, too, believe, as she does, that: “There are easy ways to show up lovingly.”

Now, her way of doing this may be to hand-temper some Belgian chocolate, fashion it into a small, delicate rosebud and leave it as a gift on a pillow, and mine might be to grab a box of Cadbury Favourites from the servo on the way home, but potato, patata.

We are basically the same person, Meghan and I, and the only difference is that she has time to “live meaningfully” and I do not.

Also, I am not exactly sure what that means, but I am sure that whatever it is, I want to do it.

And I’m going to start by adding an extra “H” to my name. Yes, just as Meghan has that extra “H” – including one that’s a prince – I am going to add one to my name in the hopes it might change my fortunes also.

Therefore, from hereon in, could you please address me as Frahan. Not Fran. Oh no, she’s gone, and in her place is Frahan, Owner of Le Creuset Saucepan Set, Sprinkler of the Petals.