A Gap in the market

Picture: Gap Inc.

For most people living outside of the United States, the 4th of July “holiday” is one of those things they’ve heard about but have probably given very little attention to. Independence Day, to many non-Americans, is just a preposterous Hollywood romp about an alien invasion. To Americans, however, you diss it at your peril, especially if you’re British (you know, after the 1776 brouhaha, and all that…). Thankfully, the 4th of July hasn’t, like several American occasions - and I’m looking at you, Halloween - replicated itself here. But there’s no escaping the fact that pretty much most of our culture has, in one way, shape or form, been influenced by the United States over the last century or so.

 Of the top ten global brands in 2017, seven were US-based. It will not come as any surprise, either, as to who they were: Apple, on whose product this blog post has been written, published and promoted; Microsoft, whose software we make use of pervasively whether we know it or not; Google, without whom we’d know nothing; Facebook whom, without us, would know nothing about us; Coca-Cola who refresh us; and IBM, who largely led the charge of technology to begin with. 

Then there are our high streets: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Subway and Domino’s are all present in mine, and you can add Burger King and Pizza Hut to that list in most other locales. And then we have the American coffee culture - romanticised in Seattle in the ’80s, made fashionable by Friends in the ’90s, and now in more or less every city and town centre you can find, ubiquitous by the branches of Starbucks and their European chain imitators. America is everywhere. Its technology might rely on components from China, but whether it’s posting nonsense on Twitter, or ordering an Uber, one way or another, we are now somewhat enslaved by the US (and Silicon Valley in particular).

When I visited America for the first time (as detailed in my recent post about UFOs), it was partly to satisfy the exposure to American culture that had been a part of most of my life up until that point. As a child, the item of clothing I most coveted was a denim jacket, because Colonel Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man wore one. When I went out on my bike, I pretended to be Jon and Ponch from CHiPs. Z-Cars didn’t even get a look in. 

X marks the spot - Sun Studios
© Simon Poulter 2021

It would be a while before I’d come to appreciate the American DNA in the music I consumed. Little did I know or understand the blues roots of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, or what triggered Lennon, McCartney and Harrison to pick up guitars as teenagers. A trip, many years later, to Sun Studios in Memphis, and standing on the exact spot that Elvis Presley recorded That’s Alright Mama, brought it home to me: how so much of what I’d been consuming since first becoming musically aware, sprang out of that exact spot downstairs at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, with two pieces of black tape marking it.

Such is the influence of American culture - projected through its domination of entertainment and the window on the US world that Hollywood, principally, has provided, that secretly we want to be American. Why else would we spend more than $73 billion last year on jeans, the utilitarian garment of leisure and, increasingly (thanks to Silicon Valley), the office, which began life as workwear for miners in the 1870s in - guess where? - the good ol’ US of A. 

From hoodies and baseball caps, tracky bottoms to trainers (oh, alright then, “sneakers”), we’ve allowed ourselves to be dressed by America. Its clothing is cheap and functional, and for a range of generations, ubiquity itself. Walk through any shopping centre and mentally note how much American fashion dominates: middle aged men in polo shirts, fortysomething mums in All Stars, even the backpacks carried by students. All of which calls into question why Gap has so spectacularly failed in prevailing in the UK and Ireland, this week announcing that it would close all 81 stores in the UK - 23 by the end of July and the remainder by the end of September. 

On that first trip to the US, in 1992, I was like a child in a sweetshop on discovering Gap for myself, and then finding branches everywhere I went. For very little money (even less when the exchange rate was more than two dollars to the pound), I stocked up on American casualwear staples like jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts with logos. True, it would hardly get me profiled in GQ, but this was comfort food for the wardrobe. Over the next couple of decades, as my trips to the US became more frequent - both for leisure and for work - no visit would be complete without stocking up at Gap, especially as my weight fluctuated. Got thin? Throw out the XXLs and stock up at Gap! Piled on the pounds? There’s a size waiting just for you! Likewise with Gap’s sister brands, the even cheaper Old Navy, and the more upmarket Banana Republic.

Picture: Gap Inc.

When Gap opened up in the UK, it offered the same retail experience as its homeland, which meant that for those craving a bit of the America tasted on holidays to Florida, California or New York, you could replicate it here. The brightly lit, white-painted shops, the SoHo loft-style wooden flooring, the colourful arrays of smart-casual standards like chinos and button-down shirts, artfully but functionally arranged. The chain, which was founded in San Francisco in 1969 by Donald and Doris Fisher, proliferated outside its native America, eventually peaking at 3,800 shops worldwide. It, and its sub-brands, were an unmitigated success, driving fashion uniformity throughout the world. That, of course, was before COVID-19, and we all went online for our work-from-home all-day pyjama bottoms.

Gap’s disappearance from these shores will not be exclusive. The company is undergoing a strategic review of its own US operations, with nearly third of its retail base there being closed by 2024. Here, where its first UK shop opened in 1987, is blaming “market dynamics” on the retreat. In essence, its appeal has gradually eroded, as online retailers have provided alternative clothing ranges - some bordering on designer-level. Basically, it’s the same story that has afflicted other big retailers like Debenhams and Arcadia’s Top Shop, high street perennials, you’d think. 

Picture: Gap Inc.

Not everyone, however, is struggling. Just look at Primark, whose cheap-and-cheerful appeal was highlighted profusely back in April when the rules on ‘general’ retail outlets were eased, and queues for the chain were seen snaking round the block. Gap, on the other hand, isn’t disappearing for good in the UK: the company believes that its brand is strong enough for it to continue online. I’ve certainly found their webstore invaluable over the last year as lockdown coincided with my latest weightloss programme, requiring another eyewatering binge. 

My loyalty is, I’ll admit, the result of laziness, a lack of imagination and an unwillingness to part cash for anything more exotic. In other words, I’m in my ’50s. Summer’s here, and I need a pair of shorts. Gap has what I need, and I can’t be bothered with buying more or less the same thing from Marks & Spencer or Next, for pretty much the same price. Somehow, a pair of cargos from M&S are just not the same as a pair from Gap, where - when paired with a hoodie and a baseball cap - I can faithfully replicate that ‘American dad at barbecue’ look (which, if you ever attend an American barbecue on the 4th of July, will be exclusively attended by American dads in cargo shorts, hoodies and baseball caps).

Picture: Gap Inc.

That, though, is the key to Gap’s success - and its failure. It’s the shop you go to for classics, not to be on-trend. For unimaginative men like me, it’s where you shop to ensure you’re kitted out in the right uniform, the camouflage blend you into the background. That suits me just fine, and I’d expect the same story to be told by most of my peers. For women, on the other hand, the story might be different, and probably more detrimental to Gap’s fortunes. Women with a hankering for following fashion trends more faithfully have increasingly turned off Gap and found other, sharper places to buy their togs. 

Gap’s appeal - both from the clothing it stocked to the shops they sold it in - began to wain. Fashion writers commented on the quality of its lines dropping, and that, frankly, the stores’ Manhattan look becoming passé. On Sky News the other day, as Gap’s exit from British high streets was sinking in, one women commented that the chain had “stopped being relevant”. 

The comments were eerily similar to those which accompany the numerous schisms that Marks & Spencer has gone through, every time disappointing financial results are posted. Perhaps, in Gap’s case, people have stopped wanting to look so American...

Just another housebound Monday

© Simon Poulter 2021

And, so, another month rolls around, and another Monday, too. Like last Monday, and the 40-odd Mondays before that, I’m back on the sofa for another day of e-mail, instant messages and Teams meetings. At best, the most I’ll move is to the kitchen and back, for coffee, lunch, an afternoon bucket of tea, before, early evening, hopping on the exercise bike for half an hour of grunting at whatever early evening kick-off the Premier League has contrived to offer, and in a vague attempt at keeping the inevitable cardiovascular event at bay. For tomorrow, and the days after that, repeat as prescribed, at least until 12 April when, Boris promised us last week, my local swimming pool might reopen, if we all behave ourselves until then.

Despite Johnson presenting his 60-page ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown last Monday, we are still in it. We’re not exactly under house arrest, but even a quick dash to Caffé Nero feels like something from The Great Escape involving a vaulting horse and dislodged earth released surreptitiously down the trouser leg. As we enter the third month of the latest lockdown, and almost the anniversary of the first, reflecting on the routines of these last 12 dystopian months only leaves one longing for the traditions of working somewhere other than where you live. 

© Simon Poulter 2021

I miss being out and about early on a crisp spring morning; I miss the process of deciding what to wear to the office; I miss the vagaries of London commuting and the hour’s buffer between home and work life, work life and home, and a chance to listen to music or read a book; I miss that first Starbucks on the way into the office, and the prospect of a quick pint on the way home. I miss normality, and long for it to replace the new normality imposed upon us. But...

I started my current job on 6 April last year, so I have never known what office life is like at my new company. Apart from my interview, I’ve never even set foot in the building. What I will eventually encounter, fully, for the first time, remains to be seen: while we’ve all been away, my company has been adapting its office space to the new normal. Our CEO recently wrote an op-ed for The Times in which he asked whether the office of the future will ever be the same as it was before, a location around which productivity and collaboration is concentrated, rather than a collection of colleagues working together but meeting physically when required. He observed that 60% of employees’ time is spent on individual activities, while the remaining time is spent working in teams, activities that could still require an office, which by turn would not necessarily require the same amount of floor plan as pre-COVID. While not dismissing the idea of offices altogether, he mooted the idea that a single, Central London location where everyone hubbed together might not even be still valid, with a distributed, regional network of smaller properties possible to drive greater diversity, inclusion and even talent attraction. 

Wherever we work, and however we work, we still need to return to work in some form of how it was. The question is when, rather than if. Last week, Boris, speaking to a Network Rail conference (by video, natch) dismissed concerns that WFH would remain the new norm by gleefully predicting a return to mass commuting within a “few short months”. We would, he said, be “consumed once again” by our desire for social contact. Clearly, judging by the panicked look on the face of his health secretary and the deputy chief medical officer on Friday, ahead of a weekend of spring-like weather, we are already doing quite well in satisfying that desire without the virus being in anything like retreat. The prime minister is, however, clearly, walking a tightrope here (and not a zipline): he needs everyone to Stay Home. Save Lives. Protect The NHS.™, but also desperately needs the economy flowing again. City centres need the sandwich shops and pubs open again. But, perhaps equally as importantly, we need the release of normality to ease the mental health crisis looming of a nation confined to barracks. Just look at the full parks at the first sign of the mercury rising: it’s not civil disobedience (even if a few provocative camera angles in the Daily Mail shock-horror the world into thinking everyone is out giving a massive “up yours” to restrictions). Somewhere between illusion and reality lies the truth. 

The more I think of it, all of the ‘gates’ in Boris’s timetable seem eons away. Even next week’s ridiculous reopening of schools (why can’t they be allowed to stay closed until after Easter, or at least until teachers have all been vaccinated?). But while there will be a social tsunami of pub beer gardens overflowing just as soon as they can, working practices might not, despite Johnson’s conviction that “the British people will be consumed once again with their desire for the genuine face-to-face meeting that makes all the difference to the deal or whatever it is.” 

Once workers have been given a taste of flexible working, they won’t want to go back. When one of my former companies brought in mandatory three-days-a-week working from a designated ‘hub’, there was uproar, especially as desks were being deliberately limited (thus hinting at games of musical chairs first thing in the morning, with the losers ending up on the redundancy list). My last company went the other way - office spaces were there if you needed them, but there were no hard expectation to use them. That, though, was a Silicon Valley software company, a company steeped in digital technology, and obsessed with myriad online collaboration tools that actually became overwhelming to use. For me, personally, I still work best when I can walk over to someone’s desk, or stop them at the coffee machine, or poke my head around the door of their office, when I’ve got something to ask.

Picture: HSBC

I guess it depends on the business. Technology companies - especially those with a collaborative model - will be more adept at remote working via digital tools. Other industries won’t. Goldman Sachs’ chief executive David Soloman has branded remote working as an “aberration” and is urging his staff to come back to its offices as quickly as possible. Soloman actually saw more in common at his bank with tech companies, branding its work recently as an ”innovative, collaborative apprenticeship culture”. Working from home was not, he said “a new normal”, adding that he was “a big believer in personal connectivity”. Contrast that with HSBC, which last week said that it would be cutting its office space by 40%. But even that, though, might be at odds with the Canary Wharf estate where HSBC has it's corporate headquarters.

This morning, Canary Wharf's head of strategy, Howard Dawber, told Radio 4's Today programme that he expects the start of a return to the office as early as 29 March, with a 100% return by June when all of the ancillary services around the financial district, like pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, are allowed to open again. I'm not so sure: the area in Paddington where my office is located offers all that, but I don't see any sort of wholesale return from remote working. “We've got about five or six thousand staff working on the wharf at the moment,” Dawber said. “We expect over the next few months a gradual increase there - obviously the government's advice is still to work from home and I think everyone is sticking to that.” But he added: “Where the technology makes it possible to work from home, I think the processes and attitudes of businesses have caught up now to the point where I think it's going to be more socially acceptable to take the occasional day working from home.”

Dawber's point is that he expects working from home to return to an occasional choice - “one day a week or a couple of days a month” - adding that WFH has generated its own fatigue. “When the sun was shining and people were perhaps enjoying a more flexible environment, there was a sense it was going to be a short-term process and we would get through it and return to work.” But now, he says, people are missing the opportunity collaborate and socialise in person. That may be true, but WFH has worked, almost exclusively and the virus will still be out there when the Government's all-clear is eventually sounded. Companies will still, I suspect, have to convince their employees. 

For every one of us desperate to step outside the front door to work again, there are those who will not be comfortable until there is solid evidence that it is safe to do so. Working from home does, at least, provide that refuge. Even as the vaccine rollout makes progress, and the R number gradually comes down, the resistance in some parts of northern England presented on Friday by Professor Jonathan Van-Tam underlined the need for patience. There is still plenty of unknown ahead, too. The “direction of travel” might look promising, but variants of the virus keep showing up. Even though the mantra is that COVID-19 will be a disease that we eventually manage, like flu or measles, it’s not there yet, and we can’t truthfully say when that might occur.

Boris, in his comments last week, was typically effusive when predicting the return of vibrant city centres as people came back to working there. But this, it must be stressed, was no more than a prediction. Despite the Mail headlines, people have, generally, observed the stay-at-home message. In fact, the more you think of it, the more ‘normality’ has shifted. Just count the number of white delivery vans that pass your house on any given day, seven days of the week; how much has urban and suburban traffic increased due to home supermarket deliveries? Buses and trains are, now, only being used by those workers who have no alternative but going out to work, but even then, for the most part, public transport use is well down (despite those horror story scenes of Tube trains packed with construction workers crossing London).

I can easily imagine my local high street bouncing back. The supermarkets have rarely shown much difference throughout lockdown, but with the prevalence of coffee chains and independent cafes interspersed with charity shops, you can easily see these local economies bouncing back, supported by those hanging on to working from home. But what about city centres? Where my nominal office is, there’s a cluster of other corporate towers, all supported by the usual plethora of lunchtime takeaway outlets (and even trendy caravans serving artisan food). The large gym on the same site, plus swankier restaurants and an upmarket hotel would, presumably, all have been barren for the last year or so. Which of these enterprises will return to anything like they were before is hard to predict. Pre-COVID, central London was already slackening off on a Friday. One black cab driver once told me that he no longer bothered coming in on the final day of the working week, such was the shift to ‘casual Fridays’ where a more socially agreeable WFH practice was allowed by employees. So you can imagine what a hybrid model will be like.

Picture: Microsoft

For now, however, all this is academic. The government’s instruction to work from home “if you can” remains in place until at least 21 June, when it will be reviewed, and even then, offices are likely to be reconfigured to accommodate social distancing and the sort of hygiene rules that are now commonplace in supermarkets and garden centres. The sector to keep an eye open on will be the civil service. Once public workers are told to return to the office, the private sector might follow suit. It might depend on how well prepared they are and, equally, how well they’re listening to their employees. Incredibly, the pandemic has returned significant power to employees to depict not just where they work, but how they work.

However, as much as the attention on working culture over the last 11 months or so has been on WFH, Zoom calls, your colleagues’ book collection, cats video-bombing meetings and the ubiquitous battle cry of “You’re on mute!”, we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves. Only 36% of working adults were working exclusively from home last week, according to the Office for National Statistics, and that level is still the highest since June last year, so clearly not everyone. That also needs to be tempered by the fact that 18% of workers aren’t going in because they’re on furlough, with a more alarming 22% of businesses saying that they had “paused” trading. Clearly there is going to be a shift as people return to work, but there’s some debate over just how intense that return will be. 

Before COVID, commuting in London was a litmus test for office occupancy: for most of August, those not on holiday could guarantee a seat on the train, but come September, and the great return, trains became packed again, and the customary British reserve (i.e. the passive-aggressiveness that emerges as entitled City traders and lawyers join the 07.57 to Waterloo - "could you move down please!"). With talk today of a hike in season ticket prices, and rail companies talking of great holes in their finances that might need to be mitigated by flexible arrangements that don’t rely on five-day commuting, we may have witnessed a subtle but significant shift in the way the entire nation goes to work. Not that anything is going to change for the next three months at least. I’m still stuck on the sofa. At least you  know where to find me.

No words. Just a number.

A little old blog like this is hardly going to make much impact on the way things are going with the coronavirus in the UK, but it's difficult not to pass comment on yesterday's grim milestone of the nation passing 100,000 deaths. 

In March, with fatalities already emerging around the world, Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's chief scientific adviser, said the following: "If we can get this down to 20,000 [deaths] and below, that is a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak." 

Ten months on, we've reached five times that number, and are currently witnessing a rolling daily average of 1200 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. While Vallance's counterpart Professor Chris Whitty offered some respite yesterday, revealing that the death rate was flattening, the UK is still experiencing the equivalent attrition of ten medium-sized airliners crashing with all on board every single day.

I'll admit, the virus has filled me with crippling fear from the outset, ever since I discovered - ironically around the same time as it reached British shores - that I was extremely clinically vulnerable to it. My own brush with COVID in November was mild, but could have easily gone another way. A piece in The Times today picks out a handful of disparate victims. It includes a 21-year-old care home worker with no known underlying health conditions; a 25-year-old, healthy GP surgery administrator; a fit, 6ft 5in hospital worker aged 52; and so on. There's little denying that some 97% of all virus deaths have occurred within people with such underlying problems, but there is also a frightening rate of death amongst the young and the healthy, complicating the view that COVID-19 only affects the old, those from ethnic minorities or those with so-called co-morbidities. In other words, any one of us.

My clinical vulnerability led me, last week, to have a vaccination, for which I am truly grateful. My near-91-year-old mother had hers a few days before, for which I am even more grateful. My partner, a primary school teacher, still required to go into work every day, has to wait in the queue like everyone else under the age of 50. You can't help feeling that vast sections of the population are simply ticking timebombs. The vaccination programme, however, is not the point I have quarrel with. Frankly, it's been amazing that we've gone from 0-60 as it is in getting the vaccines developed and administered to almost seven million people in Britain, given that it was only at the end of December 2019 that the coronavirus was identified as a potential danger to global life. Throughout the pandemic, a vaccine was seen as the exit path out of the crisis, and once it is administered to everyone, there's no scientific reason to think that it won't be. But that's of little comfort to the bereaved families of the 100,000 victims COVID-19 has cut down in this country.

However, when the public enquiry comes - and come it surely will - serious questions need to be asked of how the Government handled the outbreak. Lessons must be learned and implemented. It's no use Boris Johnson apologising and saying that he did everything that could have been done: because political decisions were made which, without any doubt in my mind, enabled the virus to spread. Why, for example, are we only now talking about borders being shut and strict quarantine rules being put in place, when last March our airports were operating as normal, with passengers arriving at Heathrow from any hotspot in the world, getting on the Tube and heading off into the community? Why was Track & Trace such an unmitigated disaster? Why was the distribution of PPE so badly handled? Why were care homes treated as fodder for the virus to reap its worse through patients discharged from hospitals? Why were schools not closed when they could have been? And just what impact did the Prime Minister's tolerance of Dominic Cummings' Barnard Castle jaunt have on public attitudes to following the rules? 

The UK now stands with countries of significantly higher populations - like the United States, India and Brazil - as having one of the world's highest death rates from the coronavirus. When the pandemic broke out in places like Spain, Italy and France we all drew breath sharply and hoped that it wouldn't happen here. Well, it has, and now the UK has Europe's highest death rate. An island. 

It's not so much an issue about politics versus expertise. You can take the COVID-sceptics' view that the likes of Witty and Vallance are doom-mongers, but they are also just doing their job, to the best of their ability, in providing objective medical and scientific facts. Political decision-making has been clearly behind every intransigent delay in putting critical measures in place. Whether it's Johnson's perennial need to appease his backbenchers, or simply his own desire to be a people pleaser, there are fundamental flaws in his character which have played their part in the UK's response to the pandemic. 

I don't envy anyone in government right now - genuinely. The oft-repeated statement that we're facing the greatest crisis since the Second World War is fully justified. But what got the UK through those six years was a mixture of human resilience, application and a collective spirit. When I've seen people refusing to wear masks, or holding christening parties, or any of the other breaches of lockdown rules, I see more than just examples of miscreants needing to be told to "put that light out", but a societal failing that requires greater enforcement. And that has needed tougher decisions made sooner rather than later. Because, at risk of appearing selfish, I have no desire to go out of this world in the same way as 100,000 of my fellow citizens have done, and I certainly don't wish it on any of the people I love. 

I'm back, back, BACK - to the living room

Picture: Microsoft

It’s not often that I return to work from a holiday and not feel a pang of regret. Or, at least, exhale a grumpy “frnrhhhrrr” as the morning alarm intrudes my first morning back after a final blissful night of not-working sleep. This time I didn't fall back into slumber and therefore waking an hour later with a lot of agitated F-wordery in the manner of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings And A Funeral. No, this time, none of that. My two-week staycation did the job perfectly, and I returned to work yesterday relaxed and refreshed, as holidays are supposed to render you. Well, I say "returned to work" but, er, not back at work, as in the place of. That, once more, is as it has been since early April - the living room. And it will continue to be for the foreseeable future, despite Boris Johnson advising Britain to “cautiously” go back to work from the beginning of this month.

My company - very wisely - is, like many others, neither encouraging the mass return to office life nor extensively facilitating it, for now. Plans are being drawn up to make it happen when the time is right, but on the basis that productivity-wise, we're all doing alright from home and have been since March, so there's no immediate requirement to bring everyone back in. Not that doing so would be straightforward. When I started my new job in April, the whole lockdown thing was still only envisaged as temporary. Coronavirus deaths were low - England had recorded just 403 by 5th April -  but with exponential leaps of 5, 14, 25, 70 and 188 in the week leading up to it. The total UK death toll is now over 46,000, with 311,641 cases reported. Deaths are down, but the number of cases is rising. With that in mind, Boris and his ministers would still love us back in our offices, eating in local restaurants or buying lunch at sandwich shops, spending money again on suits and business shirts, and getting them dry cleaned in the same vicinity, thus stimulating the sub-economies that exist around places of work, especially in cities.

However, the appetite amongst both employers and employees to restart commuting, and therefore mingling with The Virus, is decidedly low. Analysis by The Guardian found that working-from-home would remain the norm for many big companies at least until September - a month later than the 1 August date Boris had set to get people back into the workplace. Some companies, like Google and the NatWest Group, have even said that home working would remain in place until next year. For many employees, the kitchen, spare room or, if they’re lucky, home office, will remain the de facto place of work for the foreseeable future. Some companies are even reinforcing the WFH culture, providing employees with subsidised desks, office chairs and Bluetooth headsets. Others, though, are trying to lure staff back into the office by offering free food and drink, and other perks. Investment bank JP Morgan has installed thermal cameras and stationed a nurse in the lobby of its Canary Wharf office. The accountancies PwC and EY as well as the banks Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays are all working on the principle that limited returns to office working will take place in September. But it’s still all very tentative. All major employers, with substantial amounts of office real estate, still have to get their heads around social distancing. In order to reopen, shops and restaurants have had to go to extraordinary lengths to put down direction arrows on floors, install plastic screens or simply provide staff with PPE. Offices have the added complexity of how to transport hundreds of employees to office floors by lift, even if the general government wisdom is that employees sitting amongst each other for eight hours a day should be safe.

Getting to your desk is one thing, but getting to the front door is another thing entirely. Commuting by public transport has not - and is unlikely to - returned to pre-pandemic levels. Our street serves testament to this, normally being used as a free car park for the local Zone 4 railway station a five minute walk away. Even taking August into account, parking is still freely available to us residents. People, clearly, are not going back to work. In the City of London, more than half a million people usually work in the financial district, almost exclusively travelling by public transport, but, according to the Institute of Directors, there isn’t likely to be a “mad rush back to the office” this month, according to its chief economist, Tej Parikh, who told The Guardian that this reluctance was down to public transport and childcare concerns. “Adjusting workspaces can take time, and isn’t without costs,” he added. Simply put, the summer holiday months just aren’t the time for offices to staff up again (assuming they’re not making people redundant). But clearly some companies are looking even further than than the summer.

My own experience of working during the pandemic has been defined somewhat by the fact that I started work at my company three weeks after the UK officially went into lockdown. Apart from my boss and his boss (with whom I met for my interview), and one other team member, I’ve never spent any time in the physical company of the myriad people I now work and interact with on a daily basis. In a past life, I actually embraced working from home: I could get things done (not easy in an office shared with boisterous sales people). But it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be. Getting up, travelling on the Tube, grabbing a coffee and then firing up the laptop, before reversing the whole process several hours later has its benefits. Distance, mainly. An opportunity to separate work from home.

I’ve been in the workforce for 34 years and operated out of a variety of environments and team situations. But for younger employees, especially those on the first rungs of their career, being forced into whatever work-from-home set-up they’ve had to adopt - which includes bedrooms and shared kitchens - they’re missing out on the office. Even the annoying things, like your desk neighbour’s toxic Cup-a-Soup, loud phone conversations or inane football banter (actually, that’s alright). Not even The Sound Of Colleagues website, with its background sound effects of real offices, can recreate the experience.

A few weeks ago The Times interviewed Generation Zers about how they were coping at home, and found many to have enjoyed the freedom of sitting in your pyjamas all day long, with no ghastly commute to cope with, but have increasingly found that they were missing out on networking and socialising - yes, including the running commentary from across the desk on their colleague’s romantic travails. One very wise 24-year-old even noted that he was losing out on the benefit of sitting alongside older, more experienced colleagues. “Video conferencing will never be the same as meeting,” he said.

In some respects, the pandemic has occurred at the worst time for everyone. As April and May came around, we enjoyed glorious weather in the UK, and while June and July were oddly less good, summer’s continuance with the sort of hot sunshine we’ve been having so far this August, is clearly not going to chase people back into the office, even if the lure of professional-quality air conditioning is quite a draw. Of the UK’s 15 million people who’ve been working from home throughout the crisis, more than two-thirds - according to the Office for National Statistics - worry that going back to workplaces carries too much risk. “The overwhelming majority of British people work in offices, the London School of Economics’ Professor Tony Travers told The Times recently, adding that services now accounts for 80% of British GDP.

However, a recent study by Morgan Stanley found that only 34% of Britons have so far returned to work since Boris ended the “work from home, if you can” guidance. and announced that people could return to their place of work at their employers' “discretion”. Morgan Stanley found that three-quarters of Germans, Italians and Spanish had already returned, with as many as 83% of French office staff back (though there's no clarity on whether they immediately buggered off again to enjoy les grandes vacances). British office workers seem to be even more stubborn: nearly half of office staff are still working from home five days a week, with just a quarter returning on a part-time basis. Perhaps a lack of official clarity is partly to blame. Just two days after Johnson gave his guidance, the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said: “People who can work from home should continue to do so". In London, public transport is still operating at only 25% of normal passenger traffic, a telling figure despite some evidence of arterial roads creeping back to their usual congestion.

All this raises the question of whether things will ever return to normal. Maybe they won’t, or at least, we won't return to 9-to-5, Monday to Friday office working. The functional need for workplace distancing and the social adjustment that millions of workers have, abruptly, had to make since March, could change the working culture forever. But we will still need some place to physically attend, even if it’s for weekly team meetings, or collaborative sessions that can’t be done over Zoom or Google Hangouts. Furthermore, many workers will, over time, simply grow tired of their working from their home environment, and desire the alternative that an office provides (which also means not suffering the vagaries of iffy broadband). Tech giants like Apple and Google have continued to invest in vast architectural wet dreams in which to house their workers, with the former’s chief executive, Tim Cook, even insisting that “Nothing yet replaces human interaction” and dismissed the idea of his people never again not working in physical proximity to each other. The problem is, no one at the moment wants to be in physical proximity to anyone who doesn’t reside in their ‘bubble’. Unless they’re crowding out Bournemouth Beach. When they’re supposed to be working from home.