I wanted to write this last week, but real life got in the way. Some 128 days after my last business trip, I was back in the saddle again and off on my travels. Nothing very exciting, but a trip to HQ in Switzerland is always welcome.
I had agreed with my company that rather than fly, I would drive. I am not worried about the plane so much, but Heathrow, where the whole world transits is a bit of a hotspot for me, so I hired a car, booked the Eurotunnel and went on my merry way. Suffice to say, it is a bloody long way down there from up here and took a whole days driving – to be fair however, when I used to fly in the good ol’ days, it took me around 8 hours door-to-door, so driving isn’t that much worse in terms of time or cost, believe it or not, but it does mess up the efficiency as there is not much opportunity to work other than make calls.
I left on Monday morning and got back home around 7pm on Friday night…and I have to say, it was good to be back out there; feeling like I’m doing something other than spending money at Aldi.
I hired a car from a local, family run car hire place, I filled up the tank with the good stuff (more money for Rishi to chuck about like confetti), booked my Eurostar, bought sandwiches and generally tried to share the money around a little bit.
I had a stopover in Germany on Monday night and unless you knew something was going on, you’d have thought it was just another summers day. Of course, on closer inspection, many people are walking around with masks (the German’s have had this rule for a few weeks now), but the place was rammed. People were out shopping, restaurants were full, the roads were busy; they are getting on with it. For someone who struggled early on with a great deal of fear about the financial mess the pandemic was going to create, seeing this all going on was hugely reassuring.
Now, that’s not to say that everything is tickety-boo. Hotel prices are still VERY low, suggesting that demand isn’t very strong right now, so that area of the economy still has a long way to go. On the way home on Thursday night, I stopped off in Duesseldorf, a city which has a large number of HUGE exhibitions every year and asked the receptionist at my hotel what was happening this year. She told me that all exhibitions have been cancelled, which will be a huge blow to the city. I dread to think how many hundreds of millions, if not billions get spent at these exhibitions every year.
Switzerland was the same as Germany – the bars and restaurants were full, life was going on. I managed to fulfil a lockdown ambition and have my first McGangBang while I was there. It was a thing of beauty. I learned about this phenomenon on the day McDonald’s across the UK closed down. I was heartbroken, but kept my spirits up knowing that one day, Ron would welcome me back with open arms and shower me with his beefy, cheesy, chickeny goodness.
Being back in the office after so long was also needed. Everyone is extolling the virtues of this new Working From Home world we now live in, but face-to-face is so important to get stuff done. I’ve had meetings using Skype, Teams and Zoom while locked down and I can safely say that none of them are a suitable replacement for actually looking someone in the eye. The sooner I can get back out flying again, the better…I just need to get over my own hurdles first.
The home leg of the trip was quite uneventful, but I did stop off in Dunkirk on the way as I had a bit of time to spare and had felt suitably embarrassed after watching the film about how little I knew about it all and what had happened there. Although it was a Friday afternoon, I was still nicely surprised how here too, people were getting on with it. It was a warm and humid afternoon with thick cloud cover, so not exactly optimum beach weather, but that didn’t stop the good folk of northern France from getting out there and claiming their patch of sand. There were a good few thousand people on the beach and in the cafés, bars and restaurants. It wasn’t impossible to find a parking space, but it wasn’t easy either. There is still a long way to go, but again, it was great to see people out getting on with life and keeping the money moving.
I arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal in Calais about 2 hours before I was due to depart and was offered an earlier train due to depart around 35mins after my arrival. I gladly took them up on the offer and after passport control went straight to board. This was the only mildly worrying sign of the whole week:
a) That on a Friday afternoon in the height of summer, I had no trouble getting an earlier train
b) That the train was clearly less than half full
c) That we left before the scheduled departure, which suggests they weren’t exactly overrun
When I got back to Folkstone, I set the sat nav for an M&S Food (nearest one was just inside Folkstone) so I could get myself something to eat. In between driving and Dunkirk, I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so was bloody starving. Although I’d been in Germany for two nights of the week and had my mask with me there, I completely forgot about it when I got back to UK on 24th July...the first day of the new law. I walked into M&S Food only to be met by a copper, who very politely reminded me of the new rules. Arse. Back to the car and get my mask, so I can buy myself a Prawn and Mayonnaise sandwich.
I headed up towards Dartford and braced myself…the tunnel is horrible at the best of times, but on a Friday at around 5ish, it would be hell on earth, wouldn’t it?
Not really, no. It was busy, but the queue was only a couple of miles and moving well. Great for me and my quest to get home, but again, suggests that there is still a way to go before activity is back to where it was just 4 months ago.
“This is all very good and well, Ben,” I hear you say, “but where are you going with this?”
Essentially, I am simply pouring my heart out as I have done throughout. I love to see people out and about, spending money, making things happen, investing, being productive and generally driving the world forward. It’s great to see. Going back to my earlier diary posts, you will recall my concern about the economic damage the actions of our government will have and so to finally be out there and see that maybe things aren’t quite so bad as they may seem has been of great reassurance to me.
As usual, it highlights the need to ensure each of us is financially secure and that we have a plan and at very least some diversified income streams should things take a turn for the worse; the end of furlough is looming large. October is closer than we think – Christmas is only 5 months away for goodness sake!
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TMM hasn’t been up to much since Chris last updated you. More of the same for Chris with work and Dave as a new dad, and now I’ve had to go back and do The Man’s bidding too. The lockdown honeymoon is over for now, but hopefully that means we can all get on with getting a little bit richer.
The Premier League finishes tomorrow, which will put a dent in our monthly earnings, although there is the Champions League to look forward to, which will fill a gap until the league starts again in September. I’ll keep plugging away with my surveys and see if I can find anything else to be done from my desk as well.
Our business, which flew out of the traps with a couple of quick sales once we reopened it, has since quietened down considerably. We’ll just have to wait for McDonald’s to open up their restaurants for customers again and pop over for a McGangBang and a chat about what we do about it. In the meantime, we’ll keep on adding the pennies to the pot.