My covert COVID thoughts. Day 8.

We were just starting to enjoy being empty nesters. But in hindsight, the strategic decision that Ned Nederlander and I made this time last year to downsize our nest is looking very unwise. 

A mere five months after Kleine Jongen flew off to a distant university, he and his brother, with much dramatic squawking and flapping, returned to the new nest to face the coronavirus in the bosom of their family. Admittedly, having encouraged their return, any remorse and regret on our part will need to be carefully managed – nay, deeply hidden.

We’re in no doubt that ruffled feathers are inevitable. Sadly but predictably, it seems that I am the first in our overfull nest to have my feathers ruffled.

In my defence, the changes wrought by coronavirus have been particularly cruel for me. Until two weeks ago, I was a woman spoiled by the quiet rhythms and pliant freedoms of working from home. My gentle cat sat softly on my keyboard from time to time to announce that I deserved a break and that she deserved to have her head fondled.

Life was grand. Although I always missed the energy and camaraderie of a physical office, I’m proud to say I could work an online video meeting like a boss, years before the rest of the world’s office workers realised that zoom wasn’t just something you did to a photo.

I had a choice of excellent cafes within easy walking distance of my home office. My laptop and I could wile away a few hours in any of them. I had several inspirational girlfriends willing to share what I describe to the tax office as working lunches. Or perhaps they were shirking lunches; I can’t remember anymore. It was another lifetime. Whatever they were called, when I returned to my empty home office I had a choice of unoccupied beds on which to indulge in post-lunch deep thinking.

Things have changed dramatically. I am suddenly forced to share my work space with three other adults, with quite some associated loss of control. The monitor that gave me such an air of quiet professionalism has been seized as a Call of Duty command centre. Every morning I find empty beer bottles and supermarket pizza crusts on my desk. When interrogated, no one knows how they got there. Meanwhile, Ned Nederlander has staked a claim on more than half of the family dining table. My shirking working lunches are lurking in a distant life. All this change makes the cat understandably traumatised and more needy than ever.

Ned has phone calls about bizarre topics for an average of 7.94 hours every day. My board room is now an indoor football arena. I put a notice in the kitchen that says “Your mother does not work here. Put your own cups in the dishwasher” and some lark crossed out the first sentence. I noticed with horror that unidentified forward-facing users of our unisex toilet were obviously prone to dripping. I provided a helpful sign on the wall imploring them to “Shake well after use”. My pleas continue to be ignored.

Also, everyone in my quarantine orbit believes they will die if they don’t eat three or more meals a day. They turn the kitchen upside down every lunchtime, perhaps searching for the workplace cafeteria, the uni bar or at least the Salad of the Day. They have no idea that three digestive biscuits, a stick of celery and a spoonful of peanut butter taken straight from the jar will keep them going until dinnertime. Added bonus: the kitchen won't look like a nuclear blast zone.

My treasured corner office with the view is now shared with two sweet work experience kids who keep interrupting me to show me funny memes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They play inappropriate but amusing YouTube videos at unnecessarily high volumes. They have flirtatious phone calls with mysterious callers. I grit my teeth at the unrelenting tappety tappety tap tappety tap tap tappety on their phones and accompanying chuckles as they continue to indulge in their digital lives. I am living in a virtual episode of The Office, without the wit of Ricky Gervais, but with an unscripted soundtrack of offensive rap music. 

Occasionally I see unexpected value in my new situation. My family are the in-the-flesh colleagues that I missed when life was “normal”. Ned offers cups of tea before dashing off to another loud phone call. Other Q-colleagues share their secret stash of wine gums. Incredibly, one of the work experience kids can fix IT problems without leaving the sofa and without looking up from his own screen. It’s nothing short of a miracle and well worth the eyeroll and sigh that accompanies such assistance. Occasionally my Q-colleagues show interest in what I’m working on. Initially this threw me into a guilty tizz. But I soon learned to have multiple tabs open on my laptop so I can flick to a productive-looking one when someone approaches my desk. My favourite decoy is a highly complex spreadsheet that I once used for holiday planning. It’s worked so far.

When I rhetorically cry “Where are my headphones?” three seconds before a scheduled group call, someone nearby actually answers. Admittedly they just say “I don’t know”, but I’m overjoyed at such unfamiliar human interaction in my work life so I thank them for caring and tell them I appreciate their efforts. 

Before coronial quarantine, such queries merely led to my inadvertently waking the cat. She would jump excitedly onto my keyboard right at the moment I joined the meeting, often with her bum directly in line with the camera. She seriously undermined my professional credibility. The cat is a key reason I never turn my camera on during video meetings; I claim pathetically that my camera does not work and mumble something about a previous incident involving a rolling pin, a slingshot and a small child. 

But the real reason for my camera shyness is that remote meetings offer an excellent opportunity to do a quick yoga session. A downward-facing dog, a prolonged tree pose and a sun salutation are a huge boon to creative thinking. Those of you still inexplicably excited by the novelty of home video conferencing will adopt similar tactics within days, I promise. You will soon be relieved that you no longer have to remind yourself to stay seated throughout the call, lest a pair of pyjama pants be inadvertently revealed below your carefully chosen upper body business attire. Plus you’ll realise that the bookshelves behind your colleagues are mere props for making you think they are more intellectual than they really are. No way have they read that. Or that.

A “broken camera” also negates the need to control one’s eye-rolling and forehead-palming tendencies. Even in normal operating conditions I find that exceedingly helpful. As we plunge more deeply into this coronial crisis, I predict that we will all need all the help we can get.