April has left me tanned like George Hamilton with the liver of George Best.
Yesterday, was my first day back in the showroom since lock down, to check for mail, leaks, rodents and pick up a spare computer for home schooling.
Unfortunately, Daddy’s darlings had fully committed to their maths “Rock Stars” homework, and decided to go all Keith Moon and smash the monitor on the tiled kitchen floor.
After some passionately delivered spit-flecked prose, I felt marginally better.
Jumping into the car, I shot off down the drive heading into Leeds, with the same zeal as Steve McQueen vaulting a barbed wire fence at Stalag Luft 111.
It was freakishly quiet, only homeless people wandering the streets, a gang of bus drivers kicking their heels, and every ‘Road Closed’ as workmen in high visibility vests laid fresh tarmac.
Most disconcerting, the windows of my local Sainsburys had been boarded up, dreams of lunching on a £2.60 mozzarella, basil and pasta salad, now shattered.
Returning home hungry, and with too much time on my hands, I prepared scrambled eggs on toast with a love and attention to detail second only to Joel Robuchon, followed by a ‘scoot’ with my daughters in the park.
As I swooshed past the swings, attracting smiles from passing dog walkers, in my mind’s eye I was, the snowboarder, Shaun White, setting up for a forward-flipping backside 540, landing it perfectly, to win Olympic gold!
The reality was more, Mr Bean try’s to bunny-hop over a discarded piece of hosepipe and fails miserably, much to the hilarity of his mocking children and even a cackle from the aforementioned pooch promenaders!
For my own dignity, safety, sanity and liver function, I need to get back to work.
Positively, it seems there is a consensus to lift restrictions in certain areas, although the thought of a restaurant trying to operate under social distancing measures sounds like a sketch from Monty Python.
I can just see it now.
Waiters wearing smurf-chic blue plastic gloves, serving bread rolls on silver spoons, gaffer taped to wooden garden canes.
Diners sat at either end of boardroom style tables, using makeshift telephones of paper cups on pieces of string, and a small model railway, circumventing the table, offering condiments and cruet.
As far as bespoke tailoring goes, I’m also on a sticky wicket.
On the positive side, it’s one-to-one at Michelsberg HQ, so when I open my doors, there’ll be no “The good, the bad and the ugly” style face-off ‘s, like those encountered down the canned vegetables aisle at Waitrose.
Secondly, if we drink a glass of cask strength malt whiskey every 15 minutes, the virus doesn’t stand a chance, and failing that, we can always ‘do a Donald Trump’ and inject it.
In terms of the dynamics of conducting consultations and fittings, of course there will be challenges.
For one thing it will mean less cuddling and more hand-gel, but with common sense, we will prevail.
As a child, I was brought up to believe, “where there is a will, there is a way.”
Well believe you me, my will to get back to business and deliver fabulous clothing is unshakeable.
As Boris’s traffic light ticks down from red to green, I’ll be there, revving my engine, ready to dart forward on that spanking new tarmac and god help any dog walkers who cross my path.