Published: 06/04/2020 By Patrick Henry
It was on this day two weeks ago. that Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister instructed our estate agency, along with every other estate agency across the county to shut its doors. It was a strange feeling to describe, but I would place it somewhere between being arrested and taking a call from the hospital and receiving the test results that you to some extent expected, yet at the same time, didn’t want to be true. We had clear indications that this would be on the horizon as our European friends in Italy and Spain were – as the media seems to enjoy putting it – roughly two weeks ahead of us in terms of diagnosed cases and fatalities. Both of those countries had forced the closure of all non-essential shops, and as much as I would like to believe that my “shop” is essential I think that would be described by anyone as a stretch, at best.
Fortunately for us, we had already put systems in place to manage the change and even had a test run the previous week. All that was left for me to do at 9pm that night was to send a group WhatsApp to the team and tell them to dress casually for what would be our last day working together…… for the foreseeable future at least.