Working from Home: Random Blog June 22

Business365 editor, Simon Richardson – like so many other people on the Island – is working from home. He’s been keeping a daily blog about the experience and reflecting on the strange times we find ourselves in as a result of the Coronavirus epidemic.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t come across anybody with a cold since the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic. Normally I meet meet friends, relatives and work colleagues some of whom inevitably have the sniffles, sore throats etc – the more dramatic among them are usually convinced they have the flu.

Inevitably I suppose the lockdown for the virus will have also suppressed the spread of common seasonal infections and ailments, but maybe there’s more to it. For a start many more of us are practising basic hygiene such as washing our hands regularly and properly, and – by keeping a distance between us – are restricting the spread of germs through droplets from our mouths and noses. 

I’ve always been a bit paranoid about hygiene; the behaviour of some people in washrooms leaves rather a lot to be desired. Let’s hope that, post pandemic, people maintain their heightened vigilance.

Sermon over. Speaking of sermons poor old Donald was a bit hacked off at the weekend when only 6,000 turned up for his rally – you would get a similar turnout for a footy match between Doncaster Rovers and Accrington Stanley.

Donald had expected around a million disciples would descend on Tulsa for his big event. Despite his understandable disappointment he managed to ramble on incoherently for two and a half hours, heaping vitriol on anybody whose politics were even slightly left of Attila the Hun. We all laugh but his presidency is symptomatic of a global shift, which has seen the lunatics take over the asylum. There are more power-crazed nutters in charge of countries all around the globe than I remember at any previous point in my lifetime. It’s a deeply worrying trend, and it’s making me more and more insular – life in our little Island bubble looks better by the day.

It doesn’t help that we are bombarded with bad news on a daily basis. The horrific events yesterday in Reading were a reminder that terrorism remains an unsolved problem that has merely been shelved by the media while we grapple with the ongoing Covid19 crisis. 

For my part I’ve decided that the next time I see local headlines such as ‘Big boat in the bay’ or hear on the news that ‘A Wallaby has been spotted in Laxey’ I will rejoice. It’s evidence that life in the bubble continues, defiantly, as before; I could never understand why Number 6, Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner) ever wanted to leave the confines of ‘The Village’ (Portmeirion). It looked pretty good to me.

In the meantime we can continue to enjoy our own form of confinement on – ‘The Island’.

Finally good luck to the kids and teachers who have gone back to school today, I hope it goes well. Don’t be too downhearted – the summer hols are just around the corner.