All I want is a cup of coffee and a haircut

Picture: Facebook/Caffe Nero

I've got to that stage in the lockdown when it's become a matter of priorities. I've accepted that, probably, I won't get to see a Mediterranean beach this year and if I was to scale up the scope of disappointments, it's unlikely that I'll be spending any face-to-face quality time with the new colleagues I've only been working with since April. Stir craziness has yet to kick in, largely thanks to now living in a house with a garden, and with the occasional (don't tell my GP) breakout for fresh air and exercise. Last Saturday we ventured into the Surrey Hills and, not to overdo it, it was fantastic: a triple whammy of sunshine, an abundance of green and blue in the colour scheme, and a widescreen view to replace the 4:3 constraint of the living room windows I spend most of the time looking out of.

We've accepted that lockdown is a compromise, and quite a simple one to accept: you stay at home, you don't die. I'm quite down with that. And even if we start to consider creative alternatives to the traditional ten days somewhere relatively exotic, the prospect of caravan park staycations which may have hitherto been sniffed at, all of a sudden look quite attractive. I even spent Sunday drooling over a Sunday Times feature on campervan rentals. A 2-litre Volkswagen T6 California Ocean, with fitted kitchen, rooftop beds and furniture discreetly contained within the door panels, is now looking very viable (for full disclosure, I have also started watching cookery shows and Location, Location, Location, such is the need for escapism).

But to return to my original point, lockdown may have allowed the mind to wander, but clearly not everything is possible. So I've had to pare back my ambition and settle on just two things I need more than anything else to restore order: a decent cup of barista-poured coffee and a haircut. In the case of the former, I recognise that it is somewhat bourgeois. The Nespresso coffee pods we have do the job perfectly well. But thanks to 26 years of Friends repeats, the suggested ambiance of a bare brick-lined Caffè Nero has, tragically, become hard-wired into my needs. And even if pesky medical considerations have forced me to abandon lattes and cappuccinos for the bog-standard Americano (and decaf, too), the absence of an hour's quality time with family or friends, or simply in contemplation solitario, has, I've become creepingly aware, left a massive hole in my life.

Arguably less critical, depending on where you stand on such things, is the haircut. I very wisely visited my preferred barber of three decades just before the lockdown, requesting a neat short back and sides à la Daniel Craig (because, clearly, the current 007 and I share so many physical attributes...). That was in mid-March. It is now almost June. While my Barnet hasn't quite gone the full Castaway, it is now annoying me and my other half, with grey strands I'm normally in denial over poking out like twigs in a garden refuse bag, and a luxuriant mop developing on top that will, soon, resemble one of those awful men's hairdos you used see in pictures on the walls of hairdressing establishments in the 1970s.

So, coffee and a haircut. Not much to ask for. My spiritual cousins in Italy are now emerging from their own lockdown with much the same needs to fulfil, except they have discovered - and this may well be the pattern for us here in the UK - that things have changed. The Times today reports that, amongst a basket of everyday essentials that have received price hikes in Italy, the price of coffee and perfect hair (commodities that actually transcend the term "essential" in Italy ) has gone up, quite a bit. In Rome, an espresso that would have cost Eur 1.10 before the lockdown now costs Eur 1.50, a 40-cent increase that has left Romans horrified. Even worse for the Milanese, where espressos have been hiked as high as two euros. If you didn't know already, the morning shot of black goodness is a quasi-religious ritual in Italy, which is why there is increasing indignation. "We are reporting those cafés to Italy’s anti-trust authority,” Stefano Zerbi of the consumer group Codacons told The Times. "We remember how prices were all rounded up when Italy moved from the lira to the euro in 1999, but this is much worse."

Haircare has seen an even more inflationary increase. Italians venturing out, gingerly, to get their locks trimmed under surgical levels of socially-distanced, PPE-protected hygiene, have been met with bills of Eur 40, a full ten euros more for a cut than before the lockdown. On a more serious note, Italy's hairdressers and myriad coffee bars are typical of the country's small businesses struggling for cash and being driven to Mafia-linked loan sharks. Italy's national anti-loan-sharking association says that complaints from businesses have risen by more than 50 per cent in recent months, another sad indictment of the prevailing influence of organised crime in Italian society.

But while sympathetic to the Italian cause, and not wishing to descend into flippancy, I'm the kind of sucker that would not baulk at price hikes for a sniff of good coffee and a trim. Even if these industries emerge from the coronavirus crisis as black market items, I can easily see myself giving in to my normal principles about contraband in order to satisfy two needs that simply can't be properly fulfilled, either by the gurgling machine in our kitchen, or a brave attempt at self-maintenance by ordering clippers from Amazon.

It's coming back, it's coming back, football's coming...back?

So, today is the day that Boris says certain occupations should return to work if they can't do so from home which, by coincidence or design, has contrived to thrust football back into the limelight. I've got to admit, of all things I've been missing in this lockdown, football has been the lowest of my priorities. Apart from a brief fix, a month ago when, one Sunday afternoon, the BBC replayed England's infamous Italia '90 semi-final against West Germany, the sport has dropped off my radar. I've not even been bothered by what's happened to the rest of my Chelsea season ticket entitlement or, frankly, whether or not Liverpool should just be handed the title and we all get on with our lives.

Bill Shankly's oft-quoted line about the game ("Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.") has been put into sharp perspective by the coronavirus. On one hand, it is no more important than any other part of the entertainment industry. True, for those who love the game it's as nourishing for the soul as an uplifting gig, a compelling film or an engrossing book, but ultimately, there are far more important things right now to be concerned with. Football does, however, have a perennial ability to keep itself in the news. Like a Z-list celebrity, calling paparazzi ahead of leaving their front door dressed in a skimpy outfit, just to keep up visibility, football has the knack of shoehorning itself into the public consciousness, even when it least warrants attention. That moment is now.

To be fair, I suppose, football is no different to any other business activity, desperate to figure out how to resume in the face of a contagion that, despite the daily "trajectory", shows no signs of abating. For many Premier League clubs, the vast sums of money that swill about in the competition from TV rights and sponsors eager for brand awareness are keeping them mostly afloat. For those lower down in the top flight's financial rankings, as well as those in the Football League, where the revenue from every last cheeseburger sold on a Saturday afternoon contributes to the bottom line, the eagerness to get back to work is understandable.

The trouble is, it still feels too soon. The latest view is that the British government could rule that "elite" sport would be allowed to return from June 1st, with Premier League fixtures resuming on the 12th. But between now and then, a lot of ground needs to be covered, not the least how the season's remaining fixtures could be scheduled and what that means - during a period when players would normally be preparing for the next season - for the 2020-21 competition. However, even before then, there are far more critical issues to cover.

Over the next couple of days, the footballers' 'union', the PFA and the football manager's professional body, the LMA, will meet to discuss the medical protocols needed before anyone is likely to kick a ball in anger. Various players, including Kyle Walker and Raheem Stirling, have expressed their concerns about the health risks of football returning too soon, with black and ethnic minority players most worried, given the apparent prevalence of COVID-19 in their community. Football authorities are also supposed to be meeting Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, this week to discuss how to get football up and running again (the so-called 'Project Restart'), with the Premier League clubs meeting next Monday and a UEFA deadline for leagues to submit their restart plans looming on the 25th.

However, a preliminary step towards any semblance of football coming back will be clubs recommencing training. The BBC reports today that it has seen official protocols sent to Premier League clubs which instruct them on the "strict" observation of social distancing, a ban on tackling and players restricted to groups of five during training sessions. On top of this, corner-flags, balls, goalposts and  even playing surfaces must be disinfected after each session. Much of that makes sense...but a ban on tackling? If that's where the protocols are going - football is a partial contact sport, after all - I can see the season being decided on penalties.

There are other practicalities. In Germany, a planned restoration of the Bundesliga was held up after two Dynamo Dresden players tested positive for COVID-19, forcing the rest of the squad into quarantine. Here, you could imagine a constant stream of delays - if one player develops symptoms does that mean 14 days' quarantine for the rest of the squad? And what if another player develops symptoms in the midst of that 14-day period - does the quarantine go into a new cycle?

Some English clubs have been looking at these practicalities for some time. Wolves will this week become the first Premier League club to try out a virus testing programme, using a drive-through facility at the club's training ground,  an experiment that could be rolled out across the rest of the league. In Germany, Bundesliga players have been set strict rules on social distancing, banning any physical contact with neighbours or members of the public, not allowing visitors into their homes or being allowed to use public transport (with the rules applyuing to everyone else in the players' household). In Italy, Serie A clubs face a mandatory quarantine of 14 days if any player tests positive for the coronavirus. The prospects, then, for anything like a smooth return for the game everywhere else are still open to question. The UK death toll from the coronavirus appears to be falling, but the attrition rate is still the equivalent of two packed airliners crashing every day. Even if the average 'trajectory' suggests the number of new infections, too, is slowing, COVID-19 is still out there, and still wrecking lives and livelihoods. The Prime Minister, himself, even said in today's PMQs that the infection rate rise in countries where lockdown has been eased “is a warning to us not to proceed too quickly”. 

Footballers, then, are no different to anyone else, of course, and are fearful of what contracting the virus might mean for family members and loved ones. But there is also a more serious consideration for footballers and, indeed, any athlete, in that COVID-19 has potentially long-lasting complications for lung and heart health, in other words, a sportsman or woman's engine room. Of course, most professional footballers are supremely fit and healthy to begin with, and can probably cope with the virus better than others. But we know, from national evidence, that the virus doesn't just kill the elderly and the frail, or those with cancer or diabetes. Some, who were otherwise perfectly healthy, have succumbed to the contagion.

The BBC's Dan Roan this morning reported that it's believed that a number of players have contacted the PFA over concerns about underlying health conditions like asthma as well as the prevailing fear about the higher prevalence of deaths in the black and ethnic minority community, with black men and women reportedly nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people in England and Wales. The issue of players returning to competitive football overshadows all other considerations, in my view. Playing in empty and neutral stadia is one thing, but the players need to be motivated (and, yes, I know, earning £100,000 a week is fairly persuasive motivation for kicking a ball). But as a spectator, forced to watch the season played out on YouTube, I could probably tolerate a game coming from the souless echo of a bare ground, but not when the players are shying away from tackling, and the game is reduced to one of kick-and-rush. The concerns coming from the players themselves should be taken seriously. The financial argument is compelling, but every worker has the right not to return to work if they feel their working environment is unsafe and I don't think football's implausibly-remunerated princes should be put at any greater risk than the rest of us.

We’ve got so much to be thankful for

The contrasts couldn’t be greater. 75 years ago, thousands of people thronged into central London and other cities, towns and villages to wave flags and, crammed together, sang, danced and embraced. Today there will be none of that. Not for want of celebrating 75 years since victory in Europe was declared, but because we can’t. Save for a few patriotic neighbourhoods who rarely need an excuse to get out the bunting and have a street party, the lockdown has muted, somewhat, the VE Day commemorations.

But before anyone carps, some perspective. Yes, it’s a drag that we can’t celebrate en masse; yes, it’s frustrating that there is a stilted atmosphere to the day that not even a Red Arrows flypast will lift. For some of us, there is little change on the horizon from being confined to base and in some cases of extreme medical risk, confined to quarters with clinical shielding applied. But whatever inconvenience and even financial hardships COVID-19 is bringing - and an existential threat that this represents - 8 May, 1945 should put it into some perspective.

450,000 Britons lost their lives in World War Two, including those fighting in Europe, Africa and the Pacific theatres, as well as those on the home front, enduring almost six years of the Luftwaffe’s bombs and Hitler’s V rockets. When the war formally ended after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the financial sacrifice made by Britain in its defence of liberty had been enormous. Even taking into account the material support that came the UK’s way from the United States, Britain was financially crippled. Post-war national debt peaked in the late 1940s to more than 230% of GDP. 

The hardships of wartime rationing on the home front were met by conscripts returning from the war to face unprecedented difficulties that pale into insignificance even when compared to the bleak outlook we face today. Indeed, in 1945, it would be many, many years before the hardships receded, with rationing continuing well into the 1950s. Out of that period, however, emerged the National Health Service, the very institution we now stand on our doorsteps applauding every Thursday evening. The period after the war also produced the longest - and continued - era of global peace and, eventually, prosperity. Organisations like the UN came about. You could even argue that NATO was created to provide a potent buffer to any renewed military ambition from the east. While some of that - particularly the prosperity - may have been arrested by the coronavirus, the optimist must conclude that we will not be in lockdown forever. A recession, predicted to be the worst in 300 years by the Bank of England, may be over faster than any in living memory (though the scars will take longer to heal).

I guess I’m saying that we may still be at the 1941 stage of this pandemic, with no end in sight and an attrition rate ruthlessly keeping us at home (even if the trend is downward, deaths are still equivalent to at least one loaded jumbo jet crashing every single day...). But we have to believe that the summer of 1945 will be here soon. Optimism, even if it was fuelled by a cocktail of patriotic fervour and government propaganda, kept the country going during the Second World War. Today we celebrate and commemorate the incredible suffering of everyone who lived through and fought in that conflict. I think of my own parents (especially my dad who probably only missed a call-up by a couple of years) as teenagers, denied all of the freedoms today’s teens still enjoy, even in the current circumstances. I think of the D-Day soldiers who never made it to the Normandy shore, the Lancaster bomber crews who had a one-in-three chance of coming home alive, and the sailors on Atlantic convoys risking all to bring in vital supplies. And I think of everyone back home who went to work, took on factory jobs and literally put their backs into keeping the country alive. It may sound trite, but we really do have so much to be thankful for.

I have lived in the Netherlands and in France, and have always found fascinating their attitudes to the war. The Dutch, in particular, have two events to commemorate their occupation by the Nazis, and the unfathomable suffering they were subjected to (just look at their war in late 1944 when the Allies were supposedly moving through occupied Europe, and yet the Dutch were being effectively starved to death as the last front of rearguard German defiance). On 4 May, the Netherlands holds its herdenking day (remembrance of the dead), a very sombre commemoration of people who’ve died in all conflicts, including the 70% of the pre-war Dutch Jewish population murdered by the Nazis). On 5 May, the Dutch celebrate Bevrijdingsdag - Liberation Day - a far more colourful and joyous occasion which, as the name suggests celebrates the end of the tyrannous occupation. These two days were always a reminder to me of what the UK escaped, even if that escape came at an incredible price. Life in wartime Britain was one of permanent darkness. Dad’s Army might caricature the stiffened upper lips of bucolic Warmington-on-Sea, but it rarely captured the extent of austerity, of making-do, of living, literally, off meagre rations. Now we’re past the initial madness of toilet paper shortages and tinned tomatoes going missing at least our supermarkets are stocked, Deliveroo will bring a family feast to the doorstep at the touch of an app, and with some obvious exceptions, we are comfortable. We have so much to be thankful for today.

Flight risk

Pictures: Twitter/Sean Mallon

I don't know about you, but one of the things I've struggled with the most during this lockdown is the sight, in television programmes clearly recorded before the crisis, of people crowded together. As we endure a seventh week shut indoors, studiously avoiding all other human contact apart from those we live with and (on a Thursday evening) those we live opposite, a crowded pub scene in EastEnders just looks plain weird. So, when Aer Lingus passenger Sean Mallon tweeted pictures of his packed flight from Belfast to London earlier this week, I thought it was a mistake. The cabin looked normal, i.e. rows of three-abreast seating with passengers sat shoulder-to-shoulder. That might have been normal once, when flying was almost as routine as getting on a bus, but not now, not when commercial air travel has dropped off a cliff, so to speak.

The thought of spending any amount of time in a cabin, breathing recycled air at 30,000ft, fills me with dread. Come to think of it, I can't even contemplate getting on a plane in the first place. The whole process of flying, from check-in to passport control at the other end, involves queuing. Airports, especially one like Heathrow, handling hundreds of flights a day in normal times, are usually a hive of human activity, when you add up passengers, the families seeing them off or greeting them, and the vast numbers of workers, all under the same roof at the same time. No wonder John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s chief executive, has said that social distancing at an airport like his would be impractical. "Forget social distancing, it won't work in aviation or any other form of public transport,” he wrote this week in the Daily Telegraph. “The problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport. Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometre long.”  Holland-Kaye has called on world leaders to agree a "common international standard" to put new health and safety rules in place to get air travel moving again. These, he said, should include mandatory health checks for passengers and "fantastic levels of hygiene" in airports to minimise the risk of infection.

This does, though, draw attention to the issue of the role aviation has played in the UK's succumbing to COVID-19 to begin with and, as we now know, reaching the grim milestone of exceeding 30,000 deaths from the virus, the highest death toll in Europe and second only to the United States in world rankings. For the sake of drama, it should also be pointed out that the UK represents less than 1% of the world's population and, yet, now accounts for nearly 12% of reported COVID-19 deaths. The UK is, obviously, an island, and without going down a Faragist route on border controls, our airports have continued to accept planeloads of passengers arriving from all over the world throughout the time the virus has been amongst us. Figures obtained by The Guardian found that only 273 people out of 18.1 million travellers were quarantined in the UK in the three months before the lockdown, a period when the spread of infection was already known, including a "big influx" from so-called hotspots in Italy and Spain. Many of these arrivals were only advised to self-isolate if they had any symptoms. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific officer, recently told MPs that biological mapping of COVID-19 infections revealed that UK cases have come from all over the world, but the emphasis on European origins is particularly alarming. "Whether that was people returning from half-term, whether it is business travellers or not, we don’t know," Vallance told the Health & Social Care Select Committee. "A lot of the cases in the UK didn’t come from China and didn't come from the places you might have expected. They actually came from European imports and the high level of travel into the UK around that time."

Even now, Heathrow Airport is only just starting to trial temperature detection cameras, and even then, initially only in Terminal Two as part of an effort to screen passengers. If the trial proves successful, the equipment will then be rolled out throughout the airport. However, with air traffic at the airport now down by as much as 80%, you get a sense that the stable door slammed shut a long time ago. Data has suggested that the countries who closed their borders early in the crisis have done better in controlling the virus locally. Norway and Denmark closed their borders in mid-March within two weeks of recording their first cases of COVID-19, and both countries have had only 40 and 87 deaths per million people. For comparison the UK's rate is 433 per million. Sir Patrick Vallance told MPs that SAGE, the government's scientific advisory body, had advised that ministers would have to be "extremely draconian" in blocking travel from entire countries, otherwise "it really was not worth trying to do it". That point of view was underlined by security minister James Brokenshire who told the BBC that "the scientific advice was very clear" and that "up to this point in time, placing restrictions at the border would not have had any significant impact on epidemic progression in the UK". Some scientists have, however, argued that banning travel would have made little difference. Even if there is a strong suggestion that Brits returning from half-term skiing trips to Italy may have played a part in the island's outbreak, there are many more variables that, ultimately determine the scale of any outbreak.

Whatever the arguments about what did or didn't happen, the damage has been done. 30,000 lives won't come back. The economy will return, though how and when is anyone's guess. The aviation industry will be a key component, though how much compared with before is up for debate, given that no-one is yet predicting what any semblance of normality will look like. With airlines facing bankruptcy and those who survive more than likely to raise prices - which, to be fair, they're more than entitled to do - the relative freedom with which we've been able to jet off to places or jet in from may be over for a long time. Even if technology and strict safety measures at airports and on planes themselves could be effectively applied, public confidence in flying is still to be tested, although Sean Mallon's fellow passengers seemed, apparently, at ease being sardined onto that Aer Lingus flight.

Are we ready to return to the office?

Picture: BBC

It is now six weeks since the UK went into lockdown and from a working perspective, everything is going well. On Thursday I’ll celebrate the first full month in my new job, one in which I have so far met only three colleagues in person - one, a few years ago, and my boss and his boss during my interview in February. Now I think of it, they were probably the last non-family members I had any real proximity to before everything came to a halt (delivery drivers dropping food at the front door, and the neighbours across the road clapping on a Thursday night don't count).

Since I came on onboard at the company everything has been done virtually, from my induction to the ramp-up of tasks and projects with my various internal “stakeholders”. As you can imagine, working for one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, the IT has worked perfectly. The Skype calls, even when subject to the vagaries of home broadband (from another supplier, I have to confess) have proven almost as good as being in the same room as colleagues, and even though you don’t have to see the whites of their eyes - face facts, a good old phone call is just as good - it is strangely reassuring to see co-workers in their home habitats, like everyone else ignoring workplace dress codes and not worrying (too much) about hair roots showing.

This has raised the inevitable question: will we ever need to return to the office? In one of my former companies, working out of one of a select number of ‘hub’ locations for at least three days a week was deemed mandatory. In another, an incoming CFO once told me that the policy of proactively encouraging remote working in the firm’s vast and extremely spaced out US workforce (done partly to save costs and partly to encourage more socially sustainable working) might have to be reversed, and we should return to everyone working in the same place. For colleagues based out of homes as diversely remote as rural Massachusetts, the Nevada desert and, I believe, a part of Oregon that barely had electricity, this was clearly going to be a step too far. As word spread of a possible return to centralised working, CVs became refreshed rather sharpish. Now, anyone lucky enough to have an office job (or, indeed, still have a job), has been told to work from home. So, should it stay that way?

For a start, social distancing and the lockdown have probably been a minor boon to corporate balance sheets, as the overheads of running office spaces have shifted to their homeworking employees, who are still paying for their normal household broadband and their utilities. A story in The Times on Saturday reported that Her Majesty’s Taxperson had seen a spike in homeworkers claiming tax relief on things like office chairs and printer ink, personal costs they’re now having to bear that would have otherwise been met by employers. As someone who, now, sits at a kitchen table on a vintage wooden chair which, while exceedingly characterful, is about as comfortable as an 11th century village church pew, the thought of ordering one of those nice, springy ‘David Brent’ chairs does sound like music to my benumbed rump, especially if I could claim 20% of the cost back.

Picture: Microsoft

If, then, it’s been proven so easy to have the corporate workforce work from their kitchens, living rooms and home offices, the old concept of hundreds of people amassed across the floors of corporate campuses seems strange to go back to. There are still cultural advantages to everyone working under the same roof, but the apparent success with which some sections of the workforce have switched to homeworking calls into acute question what long-term need there will be for great sheds full of desks. That, though being openly debated in the media, is still for the long-term. The noises coming out of yesterday's No.10 press conference were quite clear, that any easing of the lockdown won't happen soon as the government's five-point criteria for easing seem unlikely to be met, all the while the risk of a second and worse peak of COVID-19 is high. Despite this, a partial return to office working is being considered by the government, with defence secretary Ben Wallace this morning telling Sky News that there are "options".

Boris Johnson’s frankly remarkable recovery from the virus has no doubt injected some new vim into the Government’s plan for getting Britain back to work and restarting the economy. One theory is that any easing of lockdown might first allow construction workers back to building sites (though how two-metre social distancing would be maintained there remains to be seen). And then there are offices. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy is believed to be looking at a number of proposals for the limited reopening of offices, including a ban on ‘hot desking’, canteens remaining shut, strict rules on communal spaces, and desks and workstations spread out to a minimum two-metre distance (adding another half a metre to the current average separation). There is even talk of a ban on pens being shared by coworkers.

But, then, how do you move several thousand people about office buildings? Who would be brave enough to press the lift buttons, let alone share a lift safely with others all trying to get to their desks for the requisite start time? Most office lifts I've been in at clocking-on time have been stuffed to the gills (and there's always one individual who has to squeeze on just as the doors are closing). Some have suggested staggered working even over seven days, rather than five, with shift systems enabling different employees in on alternating days. That might sound practical, but what would it actually achieve? And, still, for those people who have been instructed not to leave the house for 12 weeks “at least” due to health conditions, a return to the office may not be on the cards at all: it has been suggested that the government and its health and scientific advisers think that the most at-risk in society will have to remain in lockdown for up to a year, or however long it takes to produce a viable vaccine.

Even if we could go back to the office would we want to? A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times yesterday revealed that just 25% of adults felt safe about returning to work, a figure compounded by the continued opposition by a sizeable percentage of the nation to schools returning to normal. This would impact those who, even if they could wouldn’t be able to return to work while supervising home schooling. And, then, even if people were OK about going back, how would they get there? The insane scenes of overcrowded Tube trains in the early weeks of the crisis, as Tube services were cut but demand remained high, will weigh heavily on the minds of anyone remotely paranoid about claustrophobia brought on by the contagion.

For the foreseeable future, then, many offices will remain empty or at least sparse. This, the Financial Times discussed last week, will lead to corporate finance chiefs looking at their own bricks and mortar, glass and steel, to lower costs. “The notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past,” Jes Staley of Barclays told the paper. “Maybe we don't need all the offices that we currently have around the world,” suggested another banker, while another said that his bank was already thinking about a new location strategy that wasn’t so city-centric. Tom Stringer, a corporate real estate manager in the US with the accounting firm BDO, also told the FT that: “In six weeks we’ve taken almost the entirety of the back offices of corporate America and moved them to kitchens and living rooms and it’s been pretty seamless,” he said. “People are getting used to it. The stray dog or the kid wandering into the conference call is now accepted in corporate and governmental America.”

The story has replicated itself across multiple business sectors where office-based working is commonplace. Sir Martin Sorrell, the advertising industry veteran who now runs S4 Capital, told the Financial Times that he spends around £35 million on business property in a year. “I’d much rather invest that in people than expensive offices,” he said, adding stoically that he has found the new normal of working from home to be “energising”. However, as the lockdown goes on, others are getting stir crazy. The kitchen coffee machine is no substitute for a quick trip to Starbucks, the fridge no replacement for a lunchtime dash to Pret. There are those, too, who cherish the morning and evening commutes as opportunities to place a buffer between home and work life, to catch up on books or podcasts, or simply to spend an hour each way staring out of the train window and contemplating. This is hardly facilitated by a daily routine that mostly revolves around moving between the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the toilet and occasionally the living room.

Picture: Cisco

Skype, Zoom, Teams, WebEx and all the rest are, undoubtedly, great tools to be able see and hear your colleagues as if they were in the room with you. And it’s been well known for a while what a fortune these platforms save in terms of travel costs, not to mention CO2 emissions. But they do have their limitations. On Saturday we went up to a local golf course that has generously opened its fairways to the public to use for exercise, and I realised just how narrow a vista I’d grown used to during the lockdown. It may not have been a Mediterranean beach or the Lake District, but to see the widescreen panorama of blue sky and grass was enough to widen the stage beyond my laptop screen and the framework of our conservatory. I suppose it reminded me of the loss of freedom caused by the lockdown. That, in an office, I could just get out of my chair and walk over to someone’s desk to ask a question. To do that now - and bear in mind that I’m still getting to know the vast majority of people I work with - you have to intrude with instant messages, e-mail and, if it’s urgent, a phone call. Most if not all of my new colleagues have been wonderfully tolerant of such impertinence, and there’s no reason to think that it won’t last. The bunker spirit appears to be strong, at least with whom I work. But having waited a long time to return to employment, I’m now at that stage of thinking when it would be nice to put on a suit and shoes and get stressed again about which train service SWR has cancelled today. No amount of looking up colleagues’ nostrils via poorly-adjusted laptop webcams can compensate for the social energy you only experience when you are a part of the ‘white collar masses’ assembled in a corporate office. Because there's more to the workday than simply completing tasks.

For now, the lockdown continues to be a great national experiment. The technology has not fallen over, and people are, for the most part, getting on with working from home. Even if the occasional dog barks during a Skype call, or a bored teenager drifts past the camera during a Zoom meeting, it seems hard to imagine that this would continue forever. People do, believe it or not, like to think of their colleagues as a second family, and even welcome being away from their main brood for a few hours each day - irrespective of whether it is conducive to productivity or not.