Terry Prone: Familiarity retrieved and cherished as we drift back into our office lives

As I walk through the meeting rooms, it's like visiting a roped-off crime scene, writes Terry prone

Return to office post Covid.

Sunday

Normally, the Croatians ring me on weekdays, but this Sunday, they must have got their algorithms in a twist, because they’re on constantly, the bad yokes, trying to convince me through their American-accented recording that I must contact their number immediately or the Irish Revenue will come and maul me. 

The minute I see “Croatia” under the number, I reject the call because I am up to speed with international cyber crime approaches. But the fact is that I never answer any strange numbers, Croatian or otherwise. The people my phone identifies on sight cause me enough problems without engaging with strangers. Here be dragons. Or worse. Bots.

Monday

“If the Apocalypse comes, you’re good,” Bryan says, reversing out of a kitchen press where he’s been searching for a particular lightbulb, Bryan being the multi-talented bloke whose visits obviate me climbing on bar stools to replace spent bulbs. “Enough duct tape for anything,” he explains. 

I have to admit, I’m a duct tape hoarder. I even have the pink kind with unicorns on. You have to figure, if the Apocalypse comes, pink duct tape with unicorns might be the best thing any of us have going for us.

Tuesday

Late in the evening, the phone begins to bleat. Repeatedly. Same query from all manner of friends and acquaintances: What’s the new editor of the Sunday Times and Times Ireland like? Hell of a survivor, is the short answer.

Ten years ago, the Sunday Tribune died. That was a paper with wonderful writers including Michael Clifford (now of this parish) and NewsTalk’s Shane Coleman. Nóirín Hegarty edited it. Having written some columns for her, I can testify that as commissioning editor, she’s clear and tough. 

But clear and tough didn’t cut it when the paper was a) underfunded and b) pointed straight into the headwinds of digital media. 

First of all a receiver was put in. 

The appointment of a receiver isn’t always the kiss of death, but it’s kind of an elbow-bump equivalent.

So nobody was surprised when The Sunday Tribune died, taking a lot of hopes and livelihoods with it. Hegarty has always described its death as a scar on her life.

“The thing is the team was so talented that they have all gone on to other things since and that is very reassuring. It shows you that talent outs. But anyone who has ever gone through receivership and then liquidation will tell you that it is an appalling time, very difficult.”

She ended up working for the Lonely Planet and gradually disappearing from Irish media — hence the questions today from media consumers who don’t know her. The 10-year interval has given her impressive digital media chops. 

Those, added to her previous newspaper history, where she was devoted to creating the team that gets the story, make her a formidable proposition as Ireland editor of the Times newspapers.

Wednesday

Our offices have been subjected to a “deep clean” to protect us and our clients when we officially re-open. The cleaners have put everything back precisely where it was before they arrived, and as I walk through the meeting rooms, it’s like visiting a roped-off crime scene, right down to the half-finished notes on pads abandoned on desks.

When we all left, our concern was to take everything with us we were going to need for a couple of weeks, not ready the offices for use nearly two years later.

Today, though, the building is stirring like a sleeping animal. If you stand on a landing, you can hear someone upstairs explaining to a caller how to get to us. From another room comes Zoomed laughter as one of our trainers does a leadership course.

A colleague appears and we mime hugs at each other. What’s that Joni Mitchel line? "You don’t know what you got til it’s gone?"

The great thing is that what we had has mostly come back, and it has an extra burst-on-the-tongue explosion of flavour to it: familiarity retrieved and cherished.

Thursday

We are accustomed to reading HIQA reports finding some institution or other guilty of a myriad of failures. The Hiqa folk seem thorough. The problem is that their work is retrospective, not in real time, and right now, this country has a clear need for advocacy that happens in real time.

The reason is visitor restrictions. In the last week, I have heard three unrelated accounts of elderly people — all women — being subjected to truly appalling disrespect. The women, in different healthcare institutions, could not be visited because of Covid-related restrictions, and in one case because relatives weren’t allowed into A&E.

I remember, after a car crash, trying to attract medical attention to an agonising pain beneath the plaster surrounding one crushed leg. Nobody paid attention because my face was so damaged, I was difficult to understand. And they were busy. Then my husband visited. Listened. And forced investigation of what turned out to be an acute infection. Without him, I was lost.

Remove visitors and you remove advocacy. Unless someone who cares can find a way to add a real-time advocacy mandate to Hiqa’s role for the duration of visitor restrictions.

Friday

Some books you read because the plots twist like a hyperactive snake. Some you read because the characters fascinate. And some you read because every second sentence stops you in your tracks and makes you nod or laugh or grimace. 

Like a description of a manager “who wanted her colleagues to need her as God wants people to keep praying”. Or a reference to the pointless rituals of motherhood: “This was just her maternal practice, to interject with authority.” Or a description of a product: “Ben & Jerry’s politically virtuous ice cream.” All those happen within a few early pages of Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.

My colleague, Sarah, coming into the boardroom for a chat, spots the book and does a curious tentative shimmy around asking me what I think of it, as if the wrong answer could estrange us forever. 

I tell her I picked it off a table at random in a bookshop to make up the Buy One Get One Half Price deal and have fallen in love with it. She did the same and has had the same reaction. We’re safe as friends for a while, so.

Saturday

I go to the RTÉ podcast to relish again an interview on Morning Ireland with the Fianna Fáil guy who threatened death and destruction to his party like a Dominican on speed over the National Development plan and then allowed himself to be speedily mollified by Micheál Martin, who, in fairness, isn’t a bad oul mollifier. 

The FF man’s answers have a sludgy generalised non-specificity that doesn’t communicate anything to anybody while maddening the interviewer, who keeps trying to get him to the point. Any point.