![]() ![]() The following week, streets around the station echoed not to traffic and footsteps but to a passing police siren, or a lonely construction worker’s drill above, or the fading beat of an Extinction Rebellion protester’s drum.Ī giddy group of skateboarding kids attempt huge tricks on the steps next to the statue of the Duke of Wellington, safely touching down without any need to check if cars or commuters might get in their way.Īt rush-hour, workers who in normal times resemble a colony of ants swarming out of the tube’s multiple exits seemed more like cautious badgers, creeping out one by one to sniff the air and scuttle to the nearest place of safety. By the first Thursday in September, it was still only 20,806. On a typical Thursday in February, 151,741 people got out at Bank tube station that number plunged to fewer than 2,000 in April. Viewed at ground level, the patient seems no healthier. “The beating heart of the British economy is not beating.” “I’m looking over the City and it’s very beautiful, and very quiet, and something isn’t right,” he says. Speaking from his high-rise office a few days later, Richard Clarke, a City specialist at Matthews and Goodman property firm, reflects on the panorama in front of him. If in past economic crises, London’s financial centre has appeared culpable and yet somehow immune, this crash seems to be as indiscriminate as the virus that caused it – and the smallest players have hardly seen their affluent customers in months.Įven as the locals tell themselves that everything will be all right in the end, banks are contemplating billions in bad debt and the worst white-collar jobs crisis since the early 90s, while the creeping return of Covid-19 appears to be putting the City’s tentative recovery on life support again – and, perhaps, bringing about the end of an era.Ī sense that will only have been amplified by this week’s U-turn on the return to work. While he is only a minnow in the City of London’s vast ecosystem, his situation differs from that of many bigger fish only in scale. Hooke – of John W Hooke and Son, where the walls are stained with his father’s cigarette smoke and adorned by two pictures of the Queen – is alive, along with his business, but only just. ![]() “Dean!” says Paul Chapman, a managing director at Tysers Insurance Brokers, who has had his suits made here since Hooke’s father ran the place in the 90s. ![]() “I’ve got a customer!” says Hooke, with a broad grin. Now, at last, a second client arrives, and the two greet each other like long-lost friends. “You do see people wandering round,” he says, “but we need them coming in. Most days, he gives up waiting at about 3pm and closes up to go home or get a beer with another tailor, “to drown our sorrows”. Hooke has been in since Monday, and so far his patience has been rewarded by a single City worker coming in to buy a suit. ![]()
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