So, Miguel, Salma and I are all very lucky to have jobs that allow us to work from home. We all sporadically work from home anyway, so the adjustment during lockdown wasn’t as big as I imagine it was for others.

However, living in a small London apartment and having all three of us working from home at the same time, for a long period of time, did require some logistical planning.

Luckily, as soon as lockdown began, we seemed to naturally form 2 office environments: the girls’ office and the boy’s office.

The girls’ office was our living room, where Salma and I had set up our own screens and mousepads, where we would wake up early and make our cups of ginger, lemon and turmeric tea to start the day with, and where we would efficiently work through the day, chatting in between meetings and sharing anecdotes throughout the day.

This office environment didn’t however work for Miguel, who found it far too “girly”, and so he set up camp in the bedroom. Here, he would roll out of bed 10 minutes before his first morning meeting, grab his laptop and pretty much work in the same semi-horizontal position until about mid-morning, when he would get hungry enough to venture out of his man cave in search for food. As with all other cavemen, his evolution to standing upright didn’t occur until much later in the day.

During the first few weeks Salma and I still had the energy to dress up and make an effort for work, as if we were still going into the office. This involved nice clothes, clean hair, sometimes even make up for client calls. The one thing I realised we haven’t done since lockdown began was wear any jewellery. I had a client call a few weeks ago where someone dialled in wearing a beautiful necklace and I realised that was actually the first time I had seen someone wearing any jewellery in about 8 weeks.

As the weeks went on, everyone became more relaxed. I went from totally presentable during my client presentations, to presentable only in the visible top half on my body. On the bottom half I would still be wearing tracksuit bottoms or African pants, or if it was a really early call with Australia for example it might even be pyjamas (oh God I am already fearing the backlash from my mother on this).

Eventually, it ended up with me wearing a presentable-enough top, with a bit of eyeliner if I can be really bothered, although most of my clients themselves weren’t even making that much of an effort.

I have to say that on internal calls though, I am one of the better ones. Those with children regularly have their kids on screen. I swear the 5-year-old son of one of my senior’s now knows more about our company strategy and politics than I do, as he has attended every management and board meeting since the beginning of lockdown. Why on earth he finds them interesting is beyond me, as I would very willingly avoid the majority of them myself.

I have also seen a considerable number of naked children running across the screen during meetings in the last few months, and even the naked wife of one of my colleagues’ coming out of the shower. The shower was next to the study and she clearly thought the study door was closed. Extremely awkward but also extremely funny as I thought that kind of stuff only happens on random social media posts.

The awkward thing about this situation is that, as many of you know, I’m very bad at hiding my emotions, and this includes being really bad at ignoring things that are funny. But when you are deep into a serious discussion about a project with a group of senior people, or even worse, a discussion about serious things like furlough, and suddenly someone naked appears on the screen, or some crazy child starts doing something really funny, I really can’t control myself. The only possible solution I have come up with is to immediately mute myself and switch off my video, laugh my head off, and then come back on and blame the internet. It’s obviously not the most subtle approach, but I can’t help it.

This was Anna and I on a very serious work call just after we had discovered that Teams provides wonderful new backgrounds. We both dialled in from Miami beach

I did have one adventure during this work time and that was when I needed to go urgently pick something up from the office. It was peak lockdown, but it was an emergency as I had an important client presentation and needed some files for it. So, I asked my sister Jewi to drive me one day, got my mask and gloves and figured it would be just a quick in and out job.

My sister parked just in front of the office in central Waterloo, where she technically shouldn’t be parking, to drop me off and wait for me. I was on the clock. I ran in, found the files that I needed, grabbed some other stuff (including my yoga mat and some communal tea bags that I really liked- I mean they could go off by the time we’re back), and then turned around to leave.

I paused. An idea entered my mind. I turned around and looked at the plentiful supply of technology on offer and thought about how useful my screen was (work sent me a big screen as soon as lockdown started). Now I was surrounded by screens that no one is using, just sitting idly begging to be taken home. One more screen would be so useful.

By this point my getaway car driver Jewi was calling me to ask what was taking so long. I was morally torn between to steal or not to steal for a couple of seconds (of course I mean borrow), but I made a decision, turned around and grabbed the screen.

The actual removal of the screen was a lot more awkward and a lot less sexy than it would’ve been in a Hollywood film. It took me about 3 minutes to figure out which cable goes where and how to actually detach it, but I eventually did and within seconds I was out the door.

I obviously wasn’t thinking about this at the time, but Jewi afterwards told me that I looked like the most suspicious looking criminal ever, sprinting out of an office block in central London in broad daylight with a mask and gloves holding a big screen, cables flying everywhere. It was totally worth it though.

My final story that I’m going to leave you with was a slightly embarrassing one. I am usually an extremely diligent and hard-working person and am very responsible with my work. Having the set up in the living room (girls’ office) has been great, as we have created essentially a proper working environment.

But there was one situation when it was late afternoon on a Thursday where I was particularly tired. I didn’t have any meetings planned, I was just reviewing work, so I decided to unplug my laptop and come to the bedroom, just to work for a bit while lying down. This already, is very rare for me.

When I got to the bedroom I was fully dressed of course and couldn’t enter the bed in my clothes. I wasn’t going to change into my pyjamas as I was only going to stay for a while before going back to the office, so I just took my tracksuit off and got into bed in my pants and t-shirt.

Of course, what happened was that as I was lying in bed working, one of the most senior people in my company calls me on Teams (with video). It was slightly awkward but fine, as I had my top on so I just angled the camera so he couldn’t see I was in bed.

This particular person, however, likes to talk a lot, so the more awkward situation happened when the laptop started running out of battery. My charger was in the girls’ office, and I was in the bed, on camera, talking to a senior person in my pants.

I had to somehow manoeuvre into the office very slowly, making sure at all times that the camera was facing as upright as it possibly could, and then had to sit in the “office” talking to my CFO in my pants.

It was a very bizarre experience, for none more so than for my flatmate Salma, who was taking a call the whole time in her room and walked into the office only to find a situation that can only be explained by the fact that I had decided to randomly take my trousers off and get into my pants in the office while taking to one of my bosses.

Luckily, he didn’t see anything (or at least I hope so, he was British so I doubt he would say if he did). Needless to say, I’ve spent the rest of my working from home life in the girls’ office fully clothed.