Working from home has its drawbacks and benefits

I have made a strict routine of getting up at exactly the same time every day as if I'm heading to the News office because it's all too easy to slide into the slothful routine of a spoiled hound who thinks he's a Russian prince and ends up scoffing chicken necks and vodka at noon.

I do enjoy being served coffee and toast by the chief gardener, who finally gets to see just what it's like slaving over a steaming keyboard all day. I do hope she takes my efforts at delivering truth and reason to the frivolous world a bit more seriously now.

On the other hand, there is a particularly nasty bamboo bush with a root system linked to a security building in Beijing that sits right outside my office window.

I am reminded that it needs digging out every time I step outside the front door.

This is another reason not to step outside the front door.

On the odd occasion I do step outside, people in the street have started smiling and waving.

At first I thought I'd left home without my trousers, or people had finally recognised what a splendid job I've been doing for the past 28 years in bringing truth and reason to a frivolous world.

But no — they were waving because in this shrinking space, it's the neighbourly thing to do. In all the rush of things, we'd somehow forgotten that.

Then there's the trot around Victoria Park Lake with Prince Finski at 5 pm, which appears to be rush hour for Sheppartonians in lockdown. It's nice waving and smiling your way around the lake but it does get difficult to maintain a healthy social distance when you're pinned between a jogger, a cyclist, a dog walker and a family of five.

Here is an opportunity for unemployed lollipop men and ladies — there needs to be some sort of traffic direction here.

So more dog time, more coffee and toast breaks, more autumn leaves, more waving and smiling — these are the perks of staying at home to work.

Nevertheless, I do miss the hub-bub of the office. The jocular punch in the ribs, the pat on the back or smack on the head, the coffee machine whinges, the telephone calls from delighted readers, daily praise from the boss, the clatter of a dozen sticky keyboards, passionate arguments about the best pizza in town, religion and parking fines, and of course the jolly japes of the sports boys when they lose a bet.

All this is a distant memory.

Now it's just me, my computer and my sofa dog.

What else does a man need in this shrivelling world?

A vat of Verve Clicquot would keep the dream alive.

Or a tiny drop of vaccine.