Mark Andrews: Don't kick our small businesses into the long grass
After 29 days in self-isolation, I'm finally back in the land of the living.
It's been a funny few weeks to say the least. Little more than a month ago, I had been down the pub watching Aston Villa get tonked 4-0 away to Leicester City, joking about the light cough I had somehow picked up, my brother responding by using an extremely outstretched arm to hand me a pint.
By Friday afternoon, the mild cough suddenly turned into an uncomfortable fever which had me wearing my coat in the office, shivering while exhibiting a high temperature at the same time. I went home, went straight to bed, and stayed at home ever since.
Not that I have missed much. By the time the fever took hold, the football season had already been postponed, which from Villa's point of view is probably a good thing. The pubs also shut, which is not so good, and we've been told to work from home, so frankly there is not a lot of reason to go outdoors any more.
Of course I may never know whether I have actually had coronavirus. Getting a test is next to impossible, but let's just say I will be jolly miffed if I haven't. After four weeks of coughing, sweating, shivering and acute breathlessness, it would be pretty annoying to find it was actually something else and that I'm still at risk.
Anyhow, as I emerged from my bunker, I discovered that one of my cars now sports a flat tyre, which I am not going to get sorted any time soon.
More pressingly, the garden now looks like a jungle. While the outbreak of spring has done a lovely job in bringing out the tulips, hyacinths, pansies and all manner of colourful flowers, it has also caused the grass to grow like something out of The Day of the Triffids, to the point that I could really do with a combine harvester to bring it under control.
And while I am now once more fit and strong enough to take on the lawn, it appears that the mower is not. Dead as a dodo, nothing, totally kaput.
Now the ecologist – or maybe the economist – in me would take it down to the repair shop, and hopefully get it fixed for a few quid and carry on mowing. Except, of course, that the Government does not consider repairing a 10-year-old Flymo to be an essential activity, meaning all the repair shops have closed. And I can't go into town to buy a new mower either, as the only places open are grocers and chemists, neither of which are renowned for their extensive selection of garden machinery.
It looks like, then, my only option is to venture onto the worldwide web, which will invariably involve spending half a morning setting up an account, handing over personal details to somebody I have never met, and creating passwords I will have forgotten by tomorrow. It will also involve paying up front for a product I have not even seen, and hoping it arrives before the grass reaches the windowsills, by which time the delivery driver will probably need to do a Poldark to scythe his way to the front door.
We keep being told internet shopping is the future, but it leaves me completely cold. Why would you want to sit around all day waiting for something to be delivered, when you can go and see what you are buying beforehand, and take it home at your own convenience?
More importantly, I fear that this crisis will deal another hammer blow to our town and city centres. Despite the Government's best efforts with the furlough scheme and rate holidays, how many of the small businesses shut down over the past few weeks will actually reopen and resume normal service? The same goes for the pubs, which have already been closing at an alarming rate for many years.
What I do know is that if we don't support these vulnerable businesses when the crisis is over, then not only will millions of people be put out of work, but we will also lose the glue which binds our increasingly insular communities together. If we lose our towns, our shops and our pubs, then we are effectively sentencing ourselves to lockdown forever.
