The Covid Diaries: Day 5 - Travel Edition

The Covid Diaries: Day 5 - Travel Edition


Our intrepid Covid-19 blogger, Darren Isaacs, picks up his blog where he left off as he sets off for 14 days of forced quarantine to visit his family in Australia. In this limited run of Covid Diaries, Travel Edition, he will share some of his travel and quarantine experiences alongside his musings on topical HR issues our clients are facing.

I love the Nightlife (Disco Round)

Canny readers will realise, after our original 50-day blog and this limited revival, that I normally start my Covid Diary entries with a musical reference.

This is of course, all part of a master plan that some day I shall commission a soundtrack. It will be a bit like Desert Island Discs and in my head it will mean I can leave law, buy a country pile, and never work again. What could possibly go wrong?

As for today’s song, I do indeed love the nightlife.

I have started to settle into a quarantine routine that largely goes like this: wake up 5am UK time (2pm local time). Make coffee, shower, check emails, eat, read the news etc until 6am UK (3pm local). Work 6am UK until 12pm UK (9pm local). Eat lunch. Work 12.30pm to 5pm UK (9.30pm to 2am local). A couple of hours of downtime, eat dinner and watch a show. Sleep 7pm UK (4am local) to 11pm UK (8am local). Get up to collect breakfast delivery, check to see if it is anything exciting and if so eat midnight feast. Otherwise, it can wait. Back to sleep again circa midnight UK (9am local) through to 5am UK (2pm local). Rinse and repeat.

It sounds like a long and boring day, but there is plenty of work to do (there always is running a business) and I am grateful to have something to occupy my time.

Managing the food situation is a little tricky. Food is delivered three times a day in brown paper bags, dropped off by staff outside my cell, sorry I mean room, who then run away. It’s a bit like an illicit drop in the movies, but the bags sadly do not contain wads of cash. As one might expect, they come at normal eating times for the local timezone. Not so normal for someone burning the midnight oil. So I have to reshuffle things a bit, and I am also getting used to eating a lot of food at room temperature. I had a few dodgy meals at the beginning (cold calamari with salad and some sort of seafood mayo, plus extra Italian vinaigrette – who actually thought this was a good idea?), but then they rapidly got a lot better. Avocado and hummus on toasted sourdough with sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes and spinach was an absolute winner. 

I think all of this now makes me, technically, a night worker. And I know the Working Time Regulations have got my back with all the extra protections it contains for night shift. It’s just a shame I am my own boss and if I wanted to sue anyone over my conditions, I would basically be suing myself. Oh well.


If you would like to read more Covid diary entires please click here.