to all things their season

 

I don't normally write much about the "day job" here. In any case, my company has it's own website, so can speak for itself to any that might be interested. If I do write about it here, it's never anything to do with the work but is instead generally about with the beautiful old mill we're lucky enough to be based in.

One of the obvious impacts of Covid is that everybody who can now works from home. I've held fort here throughout with a skeleton crew to keep the phones answered and our networks and servers ticking over, but we sent our staff home the week before lockdown and they've worked from home ever since. We're lucky insofar as almost all of what we do can be done remotely so it's had no impact on our business.

If anything, we've been busier throughout.

But it's clear the fifteen souls that work for us no longer need the 4000 square feet of office space to house them. Even once all this is over we've no intention of resuming the previous expectation that everybody will report into the office 9 till 5, five days a week anymore, but will instead move to a hybrid model of so many days a week in the office, so many days at home.

And our lease is up for review in April. So as of then we're moving to a fully serviced office of about a quarter of the floor space in a trading estate on the edge of town. It's not without some considerable regret. St Mary's Mill is a beautiful place to work and we've had a sanctuary here for more than seventeen years. I consider our landlady Jenny and her late mother Audrey, from whom she inherited the stewardship of this lovely old building earlier this year, to be friends.

But it is right for our business.

I shall miss the trout in the mill race, the deer in the field, the occasional kingfisher and heron; we even had an otter once, although the trout became a bit scarce for a few weeks following his visit.

And I shall miss watching the trees on the far side of the valley each year slowly fade with the autumn to match the rusted hue of the corrugated iron roof of the derelict old steam house next door.

I'm away for the next two weeks. It's quite likely the leaves will have turned and fallen by the time I'm next in the office. 

I haven't travelled abroad since about 2003, and so decide of all things to do so in the middle of a global pandemic. But the temptation was too great. Dad and I are sailing a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 389 called "Verona" from Corfu to Athens with Mark and Vernon, a couple of friends from my sailing club in South Cerney.

By about this time tomorrow Dad and I should have landed at Kapodistrias Airport in Corfu and be well on our way to meet the boat at Mandraki Marina. 

I can't wait.