It’s hell when your whole neighbourhood is working from home

Every morning, like sun-seekers stampeding to get their towels on the sunbeds at a cheap Spanish hotel, it’s a race to the patio for my neighbours and me. Each of us in the line of terraced houses on the village green must try to be the first to get into their garden, because the first one out there reserves the air space. If it’s the neighbour who works in telecoms then we’re in for merger talks all day. Her firm is in the middle of a big deal, the negotiations for which she’s carrying out on her patio via laptop conference calling.

Working from home. Oh dear. This is going to be trouble. Our homes are no longer our homes. Every home in the country, since lockdown, has become the outer office of some company or other. And unlike the actual company premises, the homes in which people are working are not set up for corporate grandstanding.