What will life look like a year from today?

By Harry de Quetteville

06:00

I am woken, as usual, by the familiar beeps of the countdown to the hour. ‘New developments in the hunt for a vaccine…’ says Today’s Mishal Husain. Another story that never changes. If only it were Brexit again. Who ever imagined thinking that?

In the shower, I pause. I am on the blue shift today, right? Please say I haven’t screwed up the rota again… I grab my phone, briefly glancing at the glowing green dot on the lock screen – the contacttracing app. Green means I am cleared for travel. Right… calendar. Phew. Blue shift all this week. That means an escape to the office. Must be careful not to look too happy when I wave goodbye to the family.

07:00

Our two boys come tumbling into the kitchen in their uniforms. Breakfast, then teeth. Thermometer. Normal. Not so long ago, it was the rising spring temperature outside I cared about. Now what counts most is our inner 37.5C. There is no point going out if you have a fever, as it will be

picked up by thermal imaging, so monitoring our temperature is useful.

Check ipads are charged and in their satchels. Funny how the online work never went away when they both finally went back in September. Sad how those without web access fell behind and have never really caught up. Many children have opted to stay down a year.

Suddenly the eldest is proffering something, close to tears.

‘Daddy,’ he says. ‘You know Granny gave me this, for my birthday? A boy in Year 6 said it’s rubbish now.’

I look down. In his hand is a £10 note, still creased from his piggy bank.

‘Nonsense!’ I say, too brightly. Lots of places do still accept cash, surely? Though I can’t remember the last time I used it; during the crisis, cash use plummeted. ‘Or we can put it in your account.’ What a faff that’ll be. Where’s the nearest bank now? I haven’t the faintest idea. There were three in the high street a year ago. I take the note, thinking I’ll charge his digital pocket-money balance myself. I’ll keep the tenner as a memento, pop it in

the tin with the other overseas currency I may never use again. Well, they do say the past is a foreign country.

08:00

What a nightmare! Biking to work always used to be a near-death experience. Now it’s worse than ever out in the suburbs. Car-free streets? Bye-bye to pollution? Fat chance, now so many jobs have moved out here. Plus, no one wants to cram on to the Tube now, despite the screening and the loud proclamations of safety. In the last war, Underground stations were a refuge. Not this time.

The roads are crammed. Electric-only vehicles, we were promised. Fine words. But who has the money? Government subsidies haven’t stretched to batterypowered Beemers. There are scooters and motorbikes. Loads of other cyclists. Add vans, cars. And buses. One passes too close, still carrying last year’s big end-oflockdown slogan: ‘Go Back for Britain’.

09:00

How welcome is the growing silence as I get closer to the centre of the city. An eternal Sunday. No pneumatic drilling. No pile driving. No giant concrete pourers. Where do they keep all the unwanted cranes? Not since Babel have skyscrapers fallen from favour so quickly. At first it seemed lifts were the problem. You just couldn’t get enough people up the bloody things. Then it became clear that, with home-working and staggered shifts here to stay, demand was the real issue. Most skyscrapers are half-empty now.

At our own revolving door I slow needlessly for the thermal imaging. A ping from my phone registers the updated allclear. At least I don’t have to wear one of those trackers that beep a warning to step back when you get too close to a colleague. Once they were used in training by elite sportsmen – the Neymars and Messis. Now they are for Everyman and Woman on production lines – abattoirs, car assemblies. Keeping tabs on productivity, too, I’ll bet. All in the name of safety.

10:00

My desk. Peace. At home, my wife will be letting in the plumber, making sure he wipes down all the surfaces en route to servicing the boiler; trying to teach an online class at her school at the same time. Then picking up the children later. Turned out the flexitime revolution meant flexibility to work three times as hard. Except here at the office. Bliss. Next week, it’ll be me on yellow shift, at home, juggling, and she can escape.

11:00

I look around. Six-feet social distancing is what boardroom tables were made for. Not that anyone needs props. We’ve become like bats, super-senses preventing airspace collisions… Hang on. Best not mention bats. But it’s true. Even the smokers outside have exchanged group huddles for impeccably solitary bubbles. There are some upsides: no more awkward male chum hugs-cum-backslaps. As for kissing each other, French-style, on both cheeks…

‘Nice to be reminded that your faces aren’t actually pixellated,’ someone jokes feebly. But we all laugh. It’s true. It is good to see everyone. Office life was life, sad to say. An astonishing amount of it. A lot of people haven’t found it easy to fill that social void. And no wonder, when I look around and realise how successfully our shift pattern has cut the crossover of staff. Some colleagues I haven’t seen for months. Others, maybe I’ll never see again. No, come on.

12:00

I drift out to get something to eat. The plaza in front of Victoria station, down the now-pedestrianised main road towards Westminster, is dotted with countless heavy wooden picnic tables. Lunchtime trade is just beginning and I can see the odd waiter bringing food out to diners in the middle of the street. Some restaurants do still cook their own food. But these days most get it delivered from warehouse kitchens elsewhere. ‘Cloud kitchens’, they’re called, which took off after lockdown as cramped kitchens became too hard for workers to social distance in and restaurants looked for cheaper ways to provide food. The ‘restaurants’ are just a front. Sandwich shops are no more than refrigerated shelves and a payment terminal behind a plexiglass screen. Coffee is handed through holes in the plexi-wall. Passing one of those ubiquitous Testwhile-u-wait booths, I pop in to grab some sushi and settle down. Eating out is either al fresco or al desko now.

13:00

On the way back to work, I see one building site is at full tilt. Down have come the panels proclaiming 200,000sq ft of office space. Up have gone ads for new flats, part of the Government scheme to prevent the hollowing out of cities. Planning permission rules are being relaxed. There are other changes too. Every other week, the whole area from Oxford Street to the Embankment is pedestrianised. Some

The flexitime revolution meant the flexibility to work three times as hard

want it to be permanent but the wrangling is bitter – typical of much of the ‘how to reboot’ debate, ploughing cash back into the economy to kick-start consumer spending. Further out, our Victorian housing stock is finally getting an upgrade in a subsidised mass-insulation programme. Better than helicopter money, I suppose… So some building is booming. Just not the glamour projects. No more ‘iconic’ buildings with funny audio names: Microphones. Walkie-talkies.

I head back. Thank Goodness we can walk the pavements in a straight line these days. Before you had to snake and swerve around to keep distance from people in the endless queues forming outside shops. Now everyone runs on appointments, like bespoke tailors of old. Smaller retailers have gone artisanal, and those artisans are surging online in a big way, many powered by Shopify, the allin-one ecommerce platform that boasts it can help anyone create an online store. A new power. Amazing to think I didn’t know what Shopify was a year ago, when it was all about Amazon.

14:00

It feels odd sitting at my desk. First we were told open-plan offices were the future. Then it was ‘hot-desking’, sharing and changing seats depending on the day. Now we’ve come full circle and I have my own assigned place. It even has a little barrier screen around it. Old school! I make a flurry of calls. My interviewees seem surprised when I tell them where I am.

‘What, in a suit and everything?’ says one incredulously.

‘Let’s not go that far,’ I reply.

14:50

I look up from the keyboard. Ten minutes until the next meeting. Ten minutes until our pick-up slot when my wife collects the boys from school. No more tumbling roar, all 30 of them piling through the classroom door, bags swinging, smashing into each other. How I miss that.

I use the time to have a cheeky browse of holiday ideas. I’m still undecided. On the one hand, I think we deserve a treat – a proper getaway. Not that we can go the whole hog and take the road trip/sabbatical that so many others have gone for. But the UK has negotiated reciprocal quarantine-free tourism agreements with France and Italy. So I’m thinking we drive to Venice. Wander around on our own, more or less. No cruise ships spoiling the view, no hordes on the Rialto.

After all, flights are out. Return tickets to New York are almost two grand. Cancellation insurance is impossible! Forget quick jaunts to Seville. Dubrovnik may never see another bargain-bucket hen weekend. Heathrow won’t need that third runway till the end of the century. Just as well, the rate it was going.

Anyway, ‘thoughtful travel’ is this year’s fashion. I might even learn some Italian. Then again, I do hanker after a remote rural staycation. I could even be tempted back into a tent. The problem is, everyone’s at it. Most of the Highlands are already under canvas. It’s as though Glastonbury – remember that! – has moved north. Without the music.

16:00

Almost forgot! I spotted something in the John Lewis store’s closing-down sale to give my wife for our anniversary. Need to reserve it to pick up later. Click and Collect, that was going to be the saviour of bricks-and-mortar retail. Consolidation and closure, it turned into. It was shock enough when M&S stores closed. At least they had their Ocado deal to keep them going online. Peter Jones on Sloane Square is staying open. For now.

Online orders are booming. So many people are moving out of the city, following their dream to live the rural idyll now they don’t have to endure the daily commute. (Fools. It’s the perfect time to pick up a bargain in the centre of town. House prices in much of the capital are down even more than the agents predicted: 10 per cent in the last year.) Still, idylls need furnishing, so John Lewis vans aplenty should be rolling up gravelled lanes in the Cotswolds.

17:00

Almost finished my piece now. Happily, there’s no editor to wander over, muttering about deadlines. I check my email. Ah, she has sent a little digital hurry-up

instead. The song remains the same… Yet my mind keeps wandering back to my anniversary.

It’s a big one. We should go out, even though it’s a nightmare because there’s always a risk the babysitter gets a lastminute message saying they’ve been in contact with a new case of C-19, ‘traced’, as everyone calls it. How I long for a trip to the cinema. Two hours, no distractions, no one allowed to sit anywhere near munching popcorn. But I know my wife wants to see something live again! I can’t get excited about half-empty houses, even if everyone does say theatre and concerts are better than ever. Intimate, they say. Though the prices! I thought the West End was expensive before… The mood of support for performers is jolly, though. Last year, a neighbour suggested a music teacher for the boys. He was desperate to get the gig. Later it turned out he’d been in the pit at Phantom for 25 years.

18:00

I check my watch and slink out. In the evening sun, small groups of drinkers spread far down the cobbles. Residents are being asked not to whinge too much. A police patrol passes, slows, and moves on. No one wants all the pubs to close. ‘How’s business?’ I ask the landlord as he pours the usual. ‘Bad,’ he replies, nodding across the room. ‘F—ing tables.’ Standing inside has been banned since pubs reopened just before Christmas. ‘Tables are for eating. Not for bloody drinking,’ he rants. I meet a colleague from a rival title. ‘Any truth that you’re going online only?’ I ask. He shrugs.

19:00

The supermarket aisles. Not quite what they used to be. But not far off. Bit less choice, maybe. Bit more expensive. Avocados now £2 each. Still rock hard. Weirdly, though, I can tell that it’s May by the produce. Strawberries. Rhubarb. The age of the constant cornucopia is over. The crisis in aviation means less airfreight capacity, apparently – suddenly we are down to our last five kinds of tomato. Hardly the end of the world.

Seasonal produce, less meat, renewable power, the end of casual flying: Covid-19 has definitely accelerated the eco-agenda. It has also, I realise as a swifter, younger shopper beats me to the last courgette, introduced café-culture millennials to the joys of home cooking. I dig for another tray of courgettes underneath.

20:00

At home, my wife looks shattered. I get supper going, one eye on the clock. It’s the Champions League semi-final tonight. I’m keen to watch the second half at least. TV does a decent job of piping in the crowd noises at the right times – I think the footage must be on a small delay. Fans won’t be allowed back to stadiums until there’s a vaccine. As for the Olympics, frankly, we all knew they’d be cancelled again.

‘I told Jackie you would take a plate round to her,’ says my wife. No problem. Even before all this I never thought, like some, that cities were anonymous places. They’re certainly not now. Volunteering is up. Visiting older neighbours is the norm. The NHS says community care allows thousands more to live at home, rather than in homes. Damn right.

21:00

On screen, absent football fans have been replaced by a stream of statistics that flank the action. Multiple camera angles only intensify the impression that I’m watching a computer game. A friend already has a set of goggles that allow him to sit in his ‘real’ season-ticket seat. For a fee, he can upgrade and get closer to the pitch. Typical. Just when Spurs build the world’s best stadium, the action goes virtual.

My brother said Bradley Wiggins passed him on his bike the other day. His bike hooked up to his ipad in his basement, that is; replicating gradients and landscapes perfectly. Even movies are melding computer and live action. Hollywood turned to video-game tech in a big way to get shoots finished during lockdown, and never looked back. Netflix now has a distinct category for ‘interactive’.

22:00

After final whistle I go up to bed. My wife is awake, reading. ‘What do you reckon about a holiday?’ I ask.

‘What I really want to do is go and see my parents,’ she says. ‘Properly, I mean.’

‘Why don’t we organise a picnic?’ I say. ‘We could all get tested. Sit in the garden.’

But as she leans to turn off the light, her phone pings. Reflexively I snatch up mine. The green dot has turned orange. Traced! ‘Guess we’re not going anywhere,’ she says.