Out of office, but mixing business with leisure…
Could a stay at a new ‘lifestyle community’ help break the WFH habit?
Three months after the Prime Minister set out his “road map” for leaving lockdown and tentatively encouraged homeworkers to go back to their office jobs if at all possible, most of the country’s corporate spaces are running on empty, if not entirely vacant.
Despite the Government’s best efforts to get the white-collar workers of Britain back into the commuting habit – and, to show willing, the gamest members of the Cabinet last week stepped out of their ministerial cars and on to the London Underground for a photo opportunity – it seems we’re still not entirely convinced that it’s safe to do so.
So, to break the WFH habit that is crippling the economy and doing nothing for our wellbeing – according to Nuffield Health, four out of five Britons report that their mental health has suffered while working from home – how about trying a “working holiday” instead?
The premise is simple: you check in to a cool bolthole in the countryside for a few days’ working mini-break, pull up a cosy chair by a real log fire with your laptop for the 9-to-5, and spend your downtime exploring the amenities in full holiday mode – and all without touching a day of your precious annual leave.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, I haven’t been on a foreign holiday in 12 months. Instead, I book two days of work and play at Birch, a new “lifestyle membership community” in Cheshunt, Herts.
It’s difficult to explain what it is in a few words: there are bedrooms, but it’s not a hotel; there is work space, but it’s not an office; there are yoga and spinning classes, but it’s not a gym. There are also the beginnings of a full working farm, but more about that later.
I think of it as an elite boarding school for adults. A converted Georgian manor house with quiet places to work, 55 acres of grounds and very well-funded extra-curricular activities.
Its founders, Chris King and Chris Penn, a former managing director of the hip east London Ace Hotel, opened Birch less than a month ago. The original idea was to create a weekend haven for stressed-out city workers who could walk the grounds and do creative hobbies like breadmaking, pottery and even glass-blowing.
But they have found their membership option, where £120 a month gives access to quiet coworking rooms and the gym, to be
Helen Chandler-Wilde
‘We expected people to come here for a break, but they are coming to work’
surprisingly popular. It’s £110 a night for a single room, or £120 for a double, on top.
“We expected people to come [to see] nature, but they are coming here to work,” says Penn, who struggled to work from home in lockdown himself, while schooling his three children.
He says Birch is proving to be a popular in-between for people who are sick of working at home, but who can’t, or don’t want to, go back to the office just yet.
From my south London flat, the “commute” to Birch was just over an hour. Off a dual carriageway, a long drive leads to the main 18th-century house, where the original gilded ceilings and mosaic floors are paired with industrial-chic exposed pipes and unpainted walls.
Off to the side is “the hub” (office
space), “the wellness centre” (gym) and the Zebra Riding Club, a finedining restaurant housed in the estate’s old stables.
There is also a herb garden, a brood of rescued former battery hens laying eggs for the two restaurants, and a drift of pigs. (If I’d booked a few weeks earlier, I would have also seen a resident flock of sheep, which has since escaped.)
This small but growing farm is part of their unofficial ethos of “giving a s---”, according to Penn. In other words, being good to the environment by sourcing food locally, while giving punters a taste of the good life.
I go to the hub and set my laptop up at a midcentury teak table next to a large palm plant. Everything feels much more relaxed than being in the office. I stretch my legs for a few minutes between writing emails and stroke a 12-week-old dachshund puppy snoozing on a rattan sofa. The smartest dressed person in the room is wearing jeans.
Some people are even more relaxed than that: on the huge back lawn, I see a man swinging in a hammock, typing away on his laptop. Tyler WilliamsGreen, founder of The Outrunners Charity, has brought his colleagues to Birch for outdoor meetings, sitting around a tree in the garden.
“I just do not do well working from home,” says Williams-Green. “I’m distracted by everything, even sorting out my sock drawer.”
He flicks through photos on his phone taken during his idyllic new commute: an hour’s cycle along the canalised Lee river from east London. “I was meant to be going on holiday to Barcelona, but that was cancelled,” he says. “This is my holiday.”
At 1pm, I go for lunch and order a squash and nduja flatbread. (The food is miles better than the jacket potato or baguette options at a typical work canteen, with a £48 tasting menu on offer in the evening.)
While I wait for it to be made, I walk in the grounds and fill my pockets with acorns that have just fallen; I wander over to the pigs’ enclosure and throw them in, entertaining myself by watching them sniff them out. I’m back at my desk 45 minutes later, feeling like I’ve been off a whole day.
However, it’s not quite as laid-back as working from home. After months of lying on my sofa as I tap on my laptop, my behaviour needs a little adjustment. A skirt feels uncomfortable after months slobbing around in my boyfriend’s boxer shorts. When a last-minute deadline comes in, I realise that drumming my fingers on the table is a little anti-social.
Luckily for me, I had only myself to look after in lockdown. For parents, a working holiday with enough to occupy the children offers blessed relief. “I just can’t work with my kids under my feet,” says Katie Gormley, a 41-year-old film and TV art director, but also mother to Etta, three, and Molly, 11 months. She found WFH so difficult that she had to retreat to her cousin’s flat – empty during lockdown – to get anything done during the day.
The family needed a break, too. “We’ve been on no holidays this year,” says Gormley – so a working minibreak was a good compromise.
While her partner, Nathan, 46, a finance director, took the children to look at the chickens and play in the games room, she could head to the co-working space and feel relieved: “I could work while he wasn’t, and we both had a nice time.” In the evenings, they met up for dinner and cocktails.
However nice it was to be served ice cream at my desk, however, there was a price to pay for trying to both work and holiday at once. Yes, it took only about an hour to get to Birch from my flat, but that came with the cost of the M25 wailing in the background while I was trying to switch off. And knowing there is a croissant-making class just down the hall makes work feel even more like work.
Still, as I leave, I spot a group of women on deckchairs outside who have figured out how to work and relax at the same time. They have computers on their laps, and a side table for the essentials: a latte and a glass of rosé. It’s only three o’clock.
‘Working from home. I’m distracted by everything. I’d rather sort my sock drawer’