Home.

I’m working from home, or WFH as people call it. Wfhuh. I managed to sneak in the decision before lockdown because in the end if the world is ending there’s no better place to be. Or even if the world is only temporarily stopping. That will be this year’s definition in history forever won’t it-  2020- The Year the World Stopped. You may or may not know that I’m a part time carer for my mum so am here with her (well she’s not literally sitting next to me at this moment) which is sometimes nice and sometimes irritating. I suppose there are other people whom I’d like to be here now too but that would make the house rather crowded and break these new laws of lockdown. Incidentally Boris did not use the word `lockdown` at all.  Of course what I am trying to say is that should I have this virus it would almost inevitably pass to my mum as well. So every day is also a risk for her despite me being a carer. Don’t the ironies just pile up at times like this? Course I may not have the virus, no symptoms yet so fingers crossed. If I don’t get it we’ll just get on each other’s nerves every day which is a more than acceptable substitute for the virus I’d say. Somehow your priorities do change at times like this.

So Wfh then. Well its not the same is it really. You can’t speak to people directly and its useless for any deliveries that might turn up at the office. Today I was without Outlook for a large proportion of the time meaning any business had to be conducted via Whatsupp groups. What I will miss is the general chatter, the ebb and flow of people in and out. Working from home becomes more functional less fun though I don’t imagine `being fun` is on most people’s job descriptions except entertainers. I’ll also miss going out at lunchtime, the annoying (and sometimes good) buskers, even Old Croaky (see last post). What will become of these people whose job really is the opposite of lockdown, social isolation and all that. I suppose what I’m saying is I’ll miss people in general.

The last day I went to the office the city centre was eerily quiet. Usually the bus I get is packed sometimes to the point of people having to stand, that day no more than 10 people got on or off during the entire journey. Once I disembarked, social distancing happened naturally due to the paucity of pedestrians and even the cars on the road were keeping their distance. By the time I got to the road where the office is there was nobody else walking up or down and no traffic, a complete contrast to the bustling, vehicle filled road I’m used to. Most people were already working from home, I only went in to iron out some issues with my remote connection as I’m tying a brand new laptop to a rickety six year old pc. Leaving for the last time in what will likely be months I realised how remote that connection is going to feel.

Online, it is probably best to avoid endless virus content simply because it will make the whole thing spiral into possibilities that don’t bear thinking about. The general tenor from the quarantine entertainment industry seems to be along the lines of making the best of things and Channel 4 have even slung together a Jamie Oliver cooking series in less than a week to tell people how to cook things in these strange times.

On that note I was thinking of only blogging about the scenario in the coming months before realising that’s not very cheery either (and I’ll run out of things to say now I’m stuck at home) so I’m pleased to say that the blog will now go back to what we do regularly. Inevitably without much new culture around the tone will become more retro but if you are finding confinement confining you could do worse than fish out those old programmes you’ve not watched for years and give them another spin.