"Don't stand, don't stand, don't stand so close to me..."

So, here we are, ten months into the pandemic, ten months since my gallant employers decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and sent me home whilst the situation blew out. Well, so much for that - I'm not expecting to be back in an office with other people until at least the Autumn.

And that's going to present some challenges. Now I haven't got as far as associating other people with death, but my appetite for crowds have never been great, and I've grown accustomed to keeping others at something rather more than arms length. But, at some point, life is probably going to return to something resembling what was normal, and I'm going to have to reconcile myself to commuting to and from a large building full of people whose aversion to risk might well not match my own.

It'll probably be alright, with the vaccination programme rolling out, but it will be difficult at first. Like most modern workplaces, HMRC likes open-plan layouts, with staff tightly packed together - efficient in cost terms but not necessarily conducive to concentration - and hot-desking to get even more value out of that space. Getting used to that, after what may be up to two years of working from an office across the patio from our home, will need to be a gradual, measured process.

And, if Covid-19 becomes endemic, like the common cold, it may simply not be practical to expect a bunch of middle-aged people like myself to operate in that way, even if we wanted to.

What that probably means is a hybrid form of working, where I appear occasionally, booking a desk as I need it, but otherwise staying in the Creetings, operating as HMRC Creeting St Peter. Perhaps I'll hang out a shingle - in accordance with the Departmental style guide, obviously.

Luckily, technology has moved with the times. Due to hot-desking, we don't use fixed computers, operating with Surface Pros instead, which allowed most of a large Government Department to go from office-based to home-based overnight, our letters are received at a central point and scanned there, and any letters we issue ourselves are sent through the ether to a large shed somewhere in the West Midlands where they are printed, enveloped and posted (which also allows bulk postage savings).

All of our guidance is online, there are experts on the other end of a team call, we don't have telephones - calls are made via Microsoft Teams and automatically forwarded to our official iPhones if we're not able to access our Surface Pros, and whilst our managers adapt to remote management, the distractions of workplace life are replaced with the challenge of self-motivation and isolation.

Things are never going to be the same again, are they?...