Letter from… The City of London

By Paul McCaffrey,
Managing Partner

I have always considered myself lucky to live in The City of London. During the week it has a real energy. I love that I pass so many different types of people on my daily walk to work, from creatives to hipsters to the suited and booted. The weekend is a joy because the masses disappear, unless you venture into Old Street or Shoreditch, so you can dip in and out of a London lifestyle as you choose. Since the outbreak of Covid19, the area has been eerily quiet. The buzz from the streets has fallen silent and the noise from people coming home from nights out has stopped. A once annoying sound is now sadly missed.

I have always found working from home challenging so rarely do it, but now it’s enforced. Living in a one bedroom loft isn’t ideal for two adults trying to work normally. I feel like a caged animal, so try to get out for a walk at the start of the day so I feel as though I have walked into the office. Psychologically that helps me get into work mode. Next to our home, City Road is normally bustling with commuters and cars, but this historic London thoroughfare is now deserted. Working from home now lacks London’s wall of sound.

Whilst this is a challenging time for most of us, who have never gone through anything like this before in our lifetimes, we have to take each day as it comes and look for the moments of relief that lift us. Last Thursday evening, we joined the rest of the nation applauding our NHS from our apartment window. The City was reverberating with sound of cheers and applause. And in that moment, you realise that even though you feel that there aren’t that many of you cramped into this old part of London, you are in fact, surrounded by many people in the same situation. For fifteen minutes the sound travelled from borough to borough and created such a heartening noise, that you begin to realise, that despite these extremely unusual circumstances, we can get through this together.