“Wherever possible people should work from home”

I don’t expect the people who worked in this office would mind that directive these days, it’s got to be better than this. Hopefully this office is no more, as the image was taken in 2008. This was taken when we went on holiday to Greenwich on the banks of the Thames way back then. We took a walk down by the river and this and other sites greeted us, most were a little more cheerful than this.

I used to have a couple of clients when I worked for the printers who had a transport company. Their office was a portakabin down off the A38 south of Gloucester. Man and wife ran the business and individually they were really lovely people, but they both hailed from Greece and their relationship was somewhat vocal at times. He smoked like fury at one end of the cabin and she railed at him, usually, from the other side. Passionate Greeks! They were always charming to me, just good at taking it out on each other. Whenever I arrived at the ‘office’ I’d lower my van window to see if I could hear either of them shouting. If it was quiet then he was probably driving to Greece and back. The cabin would be slightly less like walking into a fog of nicotine and the dog would be chewing something unknown under the wife’s desk.

When I took a photo of him and the dog and used it on one of our company calendars, she told me he was absolutely ‘over the moon’. So some things did make him happy.

It was a very successful business and they both worked very hard to keep it like that, and even their office was a gnat’s better than this one. I do hope they have managed to keep their business successful, and hopefully they have enjoyed working from home. I bet it was noisy.