After my sudden, unwelcome arrival on the scrapheap four years ago, there have been some major lifestyle changes. Not least, that since beginning a new career as a freelance, I no longer have to commute to an office — something I had been doing twice a week for the previous ten years or so.
Obviously, many people have had their travelling to work routines upended by the pandemic, so perhaps a sympathetic reader, similarly inconvenienced by the Covid effect, will find some resonance in the things I miss the most:
· Colleagues. Well, some of them. If I haven’t kept in touch, it’s nothing personal, but it’s not me, it’s you.
· Face-to-face, in-person conversations. Unless they’re about company ‘fun’ days, team-building activities, departmental rounders matches, etc.
· Stopping off for a pint on the way home with Martin Pritchard: the nicest, warmest, funniest, and most generous man in the world. The vast majority of readers won’t know Martin, but I feel he deserves a line or two for posterity.
· The train. Over two hours of reading, writing, music, or staring out of the window in silent contemplation in the manner of Inspector Morse.
· Coming out of the station at night to find Mrs B waiting for me in the car.
· Opening the front door on a chilly evening to be greeted by a fire in the log-burning stove and getting on the outside of a cheering snifter.
· Having a chat about the day’s events – rather than nipping upstairs four times an hour to share moments of inconsequence.
· Taking my shoes off. (Not such a pleasure for the rest of the household, I’m sure.)
I could follow this with a list of things I don’t miss, but let’s keep the tone light and positive, eh? Anyway, I don’t have time.
*Inspired – as are many things in my life* – by a Steely Dan song.
*Inspired – as are many things in …, (oh, stop it).
