Swanning around in perfect serenity through manicured raised beds of strawberries and rosemary and blueberries, the Duchess of Sussex in her palace in Montecito (not pictured here) whimsically harvests her ingredients, scrapes honey from the honeycomb of her personal hive, and floats barefoot into her pristine rented kitchen to whip up a quick pasta and make… bath salts?

Prepared to be filled with loathing, I was already hooked. When most people make bath salts at home the neighbours call the police, but when rich people do, it’s a revelation. And I was revelated. Eager to be able to welcome my forthcoming guests with my own bath salts (since those you buy are just too expensive these days) I hurried to the shop to get Epsom salts (Meghan uses Himalayan), got a lavender-scented body oil from Pep (Meghan uses the real stuff) and dug out some old pink food dye to make, what turned out to be, rather pleasant and highly affordable bath salts that I will put in a used jar and tie together with one of the ribbons I keep every time my kid gets a birthday present.

Having now found a practical, low-class substitution for one of the Duchess’s many little homemaking tricks, I watched more of the show. Settling into my Mr Price Home scatter cushions with a glass of wine from a box, I allowed myself to drift away into the super-unreality of Meghan’s joy and wealth. And I asked myself: why do we hate the rich?

The answer is obvious, of course. We are suffering tremendously. We’re stretching rands like chappies and paying exorbitant prices for electricity we don’t get and replacing rims buckled by potholes and looking for jobs no one has. South Africa is still amongst the most distressed nations mentally in the world. We don’t want to be watching Meghan pop champagne in her kitchen at 11 am with some actress she just met when our own basic alcohol – the thing we need to survive all of this hell – just got more expensive. Do we?

Wealth – especially the extreme type showcased here – is a dream most of us will never realise. All sorts of debates are raging around whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but at the end of the day, participation in the economy is to a large degree predicated on a dream. We sell dreams every day, big and small, in all sorts of ways: the dream of a tasty meal with this new brand of Worcester spice that’s cheaper than the one in the bottle; the dream of a stylish outfit with these shoes we found discounted online; the dream of a good day at school for our little ones with these school fees we just somehow paid. 

The wealth of others can be exasperating with its inaccessibility, and it’s depressing. But shows like With Love can also offer us an escape, and a strange kind of upside-down hope: the aspirational nature of wealth, that makes us dream of a better life for our kids, and try somehow to navigate our way towards this life through gritted teeth, with cheap bath salts and a box wine.

South Africans are under enormous pressure, and the pressure is mounting. But in all this we need a bit of hope and a good goal. The goal is not Montecito. The goal is to look at the parts of life we like and want, and to try to build towards that, even if we’re travelling the road towards our goals with four smooth tires and one spare. Because the day might just come when we can actually buy four new tires at once, and a lekker bottle of Nederburg.

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