I WILL be quite candid with you here and confess that I’m not really in a position to lecture you about how to keep up personal standards when working from home.

It occurs to me at this very moment, for example, that I am not wearing socks. It has gone 11am, and I haven’t brushed my teeth. Nor have I showered. I got up relatively early to get my work done sharpish, but ended up playing the guitar for an hour.

Well, you try finger-picking Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star in a dropped E tuning. Not sure it’s what Mr Fender envisaged when he invented his Stratocaster, right enough.

All that said, I’ve been at this home-working lark for about 15 years. To that extent, I am indeed perfectly well qualified to lecture you about your behaviour, which I’m guessing is disgraceful.

I will also say in my defence that, working with daily deadlines, one tends not to sacrifice precious time to frivolities such as cleanliness. Do the work then get clean. It’s the opposite of going to the office.

I don’t know how I ever managed to get into various newsrooms for 10, all showered and suited and booted. I’m guessing the lack of a daily hangover helped.

It was never worth the effort anyway. On a morning paper, you sat there for the first couple of hours reading other papers and putting in a few calls, to your bank manager, dentist or various “sources” (hello, mum!).

Then, at 6 o’clock, just when you were getting your coat on to go home, someone from the newsdesk would come up and say: “We’d like you to interview the Queen Mother about her heroin use. Seven-thirty. Her place.”

That’s why, in those days, we always wore a tie. You never knew when you had to look respectable, and nothing says respectable like a thin length of cloth tied round your epiglottis.

Today, reporters probably turn up at Holyrood Palace wearing a beanie hat and a T-shirt with the word “Motorhead” on it. If the Queen Mother – bless her – was still with us, seeing as how she worked from home, she’d probably be wearing a pair of light grey jogging trousers and a red baseball cap with the words “McCain’s Oven Chips” on it.

I witter thus in the wake of disturbing news that a shortage of trackie bottoms is looming after a surge in sales to citizens now working at home.

The word “comfort” is adduced by such folk. Come on, there’s a difference between letting yourself go a bit and lowering your standards to the point of being disgraceful.

You know my feelings about trackie bottoms, particularly the light grey ones. They say clearly and proudly: “Ned.” If I was a witness at an identity parade, I’d always pick out the person in grey trackie bottoms, whether I thought they’d committed the crime or not.

I’ve a feeling some of this slobbery is down to middle-class people “slumming it”. Some people get a kick out of being ironic, but it’s the slippy slope to wickedness.

Shopping chains such as JD Sports, which specialises in selling such garments to people whose idea of sport is a Buckie-necking competition, report demand threatening to outstrip supply.

This is what once Quite Good Britain has come to. Here’s my prescription to stop the rot: get up at a decent hour; shower; brush your teeth; men shave; women lather your coupons with unguents. You’ll feel better and more able to face the day professionally.

I’ll be up a little later and, while I might not be wearing socks, my “executive-style” chinos would pass muster at any board meeting or interview with royalty. Though I guess that, for that sort of thing, I’d probably have to iron them.

Will do

FROM time to time, like many morbid people, I think I should draw up my will.

You never know when you’re going to get run over by a cyclist or fall out of a tree while inebriated (happened once, but I survived that time).

I don’t know what I have to leave anyway. My collection of Rupert the Bear annuals. Eight guitars, none of which plays tunes. The house and all its mice.

This week, Co-op Legal Services reported peculiar bequests, including a collection of tins, a pinstriped shirt, and a stuffed bird. Don’t have any of these, I’m afraid.

And who’ll be my beneficiaries? I’ll probably just leave everything to the state, on condition that it implements a maximum wage, universal basic income and other Marxist measures.

There’d also be an alphabetical list of people to be imprisoned. However, as this would run to around 250 pages, I fear that, as in Dickens’s Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the legal fees for the will would exceed the value of the estate.

Five things we’ve learned this week

Yodelling may have caused a Covid supercluster after 600 fans attended a “musical” featuring the controversial Swiss mountain-singing. There was no requirement to wear masks. Scientists say all singing spreads droplets of saliva and should be banned forever.

Candlelit dinners ruin the food, according to Dutch researchers. Whereas diners in brightly lit restaurants enjoyed their nosh, those in darker places found it dull. Bright lighting, however, is not recommended on first dates, where you can be seen properly.

Finnish telecommunications outfit Nokia will work with Nasa on setting up a mobile phone network on the Moon. Expect henceforth to see exciting scenes of astronauts looking down at their phones. One small step for man, one long text for mankind.

Residents of Asbestos have finally voted to change the town’s name. The Canadian town will now be known as the more wholesome sounding Val-des-Sources. In Scotland, meanwhile, spokespeople for Backside, Twatt and Fannyfield said they’d no plans to follow suit.

Bad news for jessies who just dunk their tea bags briefly. Research shows just one cuppa a day lowers your blood pressure – but it must be right strong. Weak tea requires 12 cups and, consequently, a season ticket to the lavatory.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.