Office Relocation

One of the numerous benefits of my current employment is the ability to work flexibly. Its not unusual I know, but one feature that perhaps places our scheme apart from some others is the ability to end the working week on a Friday lunchtime, with the usual caveat of workload and deadlines permitting. Since the office is not close, a minimum of 2 hours commuting for 1/2 day's presence simply isn't time efficient and so I've become accustomed to working from home on a Friday for quite some time, venturing into the office as and when needed.

Despite two beautiful girls born to us, Beloved insisted that our family would be complete only with the birth of a third child, which created the need for a decision which we resolved in favour of extending our current house rather than moving. It made sense on a number of counts, not least of which was the financial consideration of mine being the only salary in sight since the CVA put in place by our then common employer shortly after the birth of our first.

All that is a long-winded way of stating that we took the opportunity to have built, an attic study above the two new bedrooms and that is where I spend many of my Friday mornings, very much close to but equally aurally distant from the other goings-on in the house. The ceiling to the west is punctuated by two Velux windows and above the monitor the guardian of time I made at school and to its left, a watercolour painted by my prolific grandad, this one of Merstham, Surrey c. 1977.

Yesterday, the Chairman and Managing Director of our UK business, Norman Bone issued a letter to all employees stating that those who are enabled to are from today required to work from home until further notice given, as he put it 'these unprecedented times of a global pandemic'.

1st day away from the office #covid19

In case you're wondering, the peanuts were on offer in Sainsbury. I was tempted away from the usual almonds (they didn't have any). Incidentally they were out of beans and soup too, except for lobster bisque which the locals had clearly snubbed.