For businesses, it has been a challenging and worrying year, in many different ways. Tim Waring, leading estate agent and chartered surveyor at Lister Haigh, reflects on what started as a normal year but soon began to change.
Looking back over the past year, one of my happier times was a fabulous day during a group ski trip to France. We’d just had a day with blue sky and sunshine in Val D’Isere, and then the Saturday night dinner is our dining highlight of the trip.
But this tranquil setting came to an abrupt end. After the first course, we were told everything was closing that night.
It was a real wake up call given I guess we had been in our world for three or four days beforehand. My other half had ironically told me I was in a bubble and didn’t appreciate how difficult things were becoming.
It proved to be a prophetic turn of phrase. It all seems such a long time ago given everything that has happened since.
I was lucky my estate agency was only closed for two months. Since reopening, the property market has been a hive of activity, helped, in no small part, by the stamp duty incentive offered by the Chancellor.
Meanwhile, I have friends in the retail and hospitality sectors who have seen their businesses decimated after two national lockdowns and ongoing tier restrictions. Some may well not re-open in 2021.
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So I cannot consider myself hard done to, when one of the things I missed out on this year was celebrating a big birthday with friends in April.
Lockdown has fast tracked my relationship with the aforementioned girlfriend to the point that I now consider we are partners, and happily in a support bubble.
But yet, one friend has died from this awful virus, and at least two others have had hard times in hospital because of it.
I might have not seen my son who lives in London for many months, but fortunately technology has allowed us to keep in contact in a way that wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago.
My grandson, Arthur, was only five months old when this wretched thing started. Now he is walking and already proving to be a typical toddler. He lives in Harrogate, so I have been able to see him regularly.
I love re-watching a video of him trying to walk and instead falling over in the leaves. Yet another reason to feel I have been luckier than most in 2020.
So that’s why, all things considered, I think I’ve been luckier than most of late. What happens next year – who knows?
When the Bank of England says things are “unusually uncertain”, maybe that says it all.
The Latin phrase carpe diem, “seize the day”, comes to mind when one reflects on the last 12 months.
