THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
The woman at the checkout says: “It’s not great, is it?” I look at her quizzically. “For July. The weather.” I say: “Oh? Depends.”
What is it, this obsession of ours, with the weather? When it’s hot, it’s “very hot, isn’t it”? And when it’s cold wet or windy, it’s just, well, downright miserable. There’s the inevitable ‘soft day’ too. We’re obsessed with climate, though, sadly perhaps, not with climate change. At the bus stop, in the taxi, bumping unexpectedly into people we know, the talk is, well you know.
We need to get over this obsession. We live, after all. on the edge of the Atlantic. Of course, we have long since been able to escape to Europe for the annual sun-drenched fest, but in the last years Spain has seen devastating floods and Greece a scorched earth. Seems you just can’t win.
People obsessed with the weather apart, my other bug-bear is men of a certain age and of a certain shape who, the day after St Patrick’s Day, inevitably don the shorts and parade their wobbly knees and pot bellies for all and sundry. Makes me want to run inside and hide under the bed. Please, you bloated boy-men, desist!
Now comes a new trend, somewhat weather-related, We’ve all pictured it: lying in the sun, toes in the sand, a waiter delivering another umbrella-filled pina colada as we smugly fire off an email to the boss telling her the job is in hand.
“Working from beach” sounds like the ultimate life hack, says a new survey. And this summer, as remote working has become normalised – for about 40 per cent of us since Covid – the trend will be taking the laptop to the beach. As a freelance writer and editor I’ve been working remotely since 2012 after decades working on the staff of national newspapers.
In over that decade, I’ve worked while travelling in almost every continent, often for travel prices for the national press. I’ve answered emails from yachts off Zanzibar, sat in on team Skype on The Blue Train to Cape Town and taken work calls in galleries in New York City. But it often proves a nightmare what with having to factor in the time difference. It’s fine when you’re running around Europe negotiating the odd hour’s time difference but in some countries, like Malaysia and Colombia, I’ve had to become almost nocturnal to meet a deadline.
As a digital nomad, as long as I have my laptop and wi-fi, I can work from virtually anywhere — or so I tell myself. But that’s until you face the reality of doing so. There’s always a panic about whether the wi-fi in the remote village is working, or if you’ve remembered to pack the converter plug.
In a way modern technology should make remote working easier, but it often means you’re just never done. The moment you think you’ve finished, another phone call comes in — which is how I once found myself half-dressed chatting to an editor from a rough-made tent in the middle of the Great Rift Valley during civil conflict in Kenya in 2008.
The ubiquity of video calls doesn’t help. It’s one thing faking an office environment on a phone call over the roar of a Durban nightclub, but quite another when your editor wants to “hop on a Skype call” just when you’re getting comfortable with a beautiful Zulu woman.
Even if this proposed, forthcoming trend of actually working while sitting on the beach might suit you, you’re always annoying someone else. Even if you are allowed to work remotely, it still infuriates the office when you join the weekly Skype meeting from a poolside at your villa with a jug of sangria at hand.
You’re also creating a false economy for yourself; to have paid all that money to go somewhere exotic then spent the whole time doing the same things you do at home is just a no-brainer.
It’s why, ultimately, working from the beach is something of an oxymoron — it’s all but impossible to enjoy both at the same time. Working requires concentration and keeping the sand from seizing your Macbook; holidays are about relaxing and letting loose.
I now live by the sea, by a beach. The sun is threatening to come out. I could take this column down to the beach. But there’s an ominous cloud lingering, so I think I’ll pass.
I am after all living on the edge of the Atlantic…
