Coronavirus: A gap in the market staring us in the face

Had a weekend to myself and I didn’t waste it. I did absolutely nothing.

The limit of my activity was to ponder the news.

Take the coronavirus scare. The disease, scientists informed us, had jumped species. Well if they will insist on sticking wedges of citrus fruit into bottles of beer, it was only a matter of time before something terrible happened. Having later established that it has nothing to do with Corona beer, my concern for catching any disease fast disappeared.

Instead I found myself watching people forced into quarantine talking to news reporters about their ‘ordeals.’ Those ordeals appeared to involve sitting in their ship cabins or on a hospital ward for a few days while they awaited the allclear.

Their ordeals were not too different to my perfect weekend. They, at least, got to go walkabout for half an hour every day. I didn’t venture past the front door. Too blowy out there.

My only takeaway on the coronavirus is how slow the fashion world has been to cotton on to the possibility of designer face masks. Plain white or mint green seem to be the only colour options. Not a sequinne in sight. Opportunity knocks.

I half expected to see the Oscars red carpet awash with stars in a varied array of overdesigned face masks dripping with diamante and feathers.

Last on the news was the high speed train into London. There seemed to be a lot of hooha about this but surely the faster we can get people out of Birmingham, the better.

Travelling into London from Birmingham will save commuters 29 minutes. Imagine the benefits to business that 29 minutes will make. That alone is worth the extra 100bn, surely. It’s only £3billion a minute.

My children were quite vocal in their opposition to the high speed train which has now been given the go-ahead to continue.

“But it’s tearing up half the countryside,” they argued.

“Yes, but our business brains now have an extra half hour to think of some way of putting things right,” I countered. They weren’t having it.

And were so convincing in their argument, I pondered getting them face masks myself. Not to protect them, but to shut them up. Do they do them in cast iron?