Lockdown Upsides

Behold that glorious standing desk of mine.

It’s bathed by spring sun from 7.30am until 11am.

It’s bordered by my sprouting potato, onion and shallot; and some Portuguese holy water.

It has a dazzling fruit bowl.

It has an aloe vera plant, bursting with its second springtime stalk of life.

It has the date, which one actually needs to keep track of nowadays (though, what day it is, I cannot tell you).

It has a food caddy that doubles as a laptop stand.

It has an easy-access pull-up bar to break up the day.

It has an empty dish rack – another way to break up the day.

Most astounding of all, perhaps, is my 2012 Macbook Pro, still rocking and rolling through all these years, and can somehow access all of my work-related documents and software, allowing me to do all aspects of my job remotely, despite the unsettledness of this weird moment in history.

It is not trendy, in finance, to say you enjoy working in finance. There is a strong trend to complain about it. That speaks as much of its benefits as its drawbacks: it can make its employees well-off, soft, spoiled, and ungrateful.

Today, I feel gratitude for this sector, which is still up and running and rocking and rolling like my battered old laptop. Guernsey funds industry weathered and remained buoyant through the credit crunch, and it will – fingers crossed – weather our own turbulent time. Its revenue will, in part, foot the bill for the hardship payouts made to the struggling sectors of industry at present.

Retail, construction, hospitality, restaurants (man I could kill a curry now), to name a few – my heart goes out to struggling businesses, the employers and their employees.

All the more reason to say, I feel grateful to be “in finance”, to have a job, to be able to contribute and produce and earn – and burn, in this scorching sun.