Diary: Love is a four-storey word

How best to communicate feelings of love, hope and joy to Londoners emerging tentatively into the city once more? How about emblazoning the words love, hope and joy on a 56ft-high poster overlooking Covent Garden’s iconic piazza? Job done, thanks to artist Anthony Burrill, whose work has transformed the historic facade of 3 Henrietta Street into a “vibrant message of positivity”, according to Covent Garden. It’s all part of a programme of moments to welcome back visitors and to thank the NHS, with limited edition prints of the artwork (not actual size, Diary assumes) for sale, with all profits going to NHS Charities Together. Burrill is delighted to “share a love note to Londoners and the world and welcome everyone back to the streets”. Big words, there. Home is where the paddle board is As a slogan for bringing your city out of lockdown goes, Sheffield’s new “Make Yourself at Home” campaign is pretty clever. After all, that’s the only place many of us have been these past few months. The initiative is to help support the businesses and communities of Sheffield in their economic recovery and, as Mazher Iqbal, cabinet member for business and investment at Sheffield City Council, put it: “We are not a city that is just ‘open for business’ – we know it takes more than that because residents need to have confidence in order to get out again – and we hope ‘Make Yourself at Home’ gives them a friendly and genuinely Sheffield way of interacting with each other as we find our way through this crisis.” Thus, a marketing campaign that features Sheffielders biking and, er, paddle boarding? We don’t know how they do things up there, but for Diary, making ourselves at home would mean wandering the city in our pyjamas eating biscuits. Rambling on Hands up who is fed up of video meetings? Us too. Brilliant though they have been at keeping us all connected and productive during these socially distant times, they can get a bit much in such high quantities. And once you have navigated the minefield of possible issues – “you’re on mute”, “you’ve frozen”, “my connection went down”, “can you see me?” – they can feel like quite the ordeal. Now Great Portland Estates’ director of workplace and innovation James Pellatt has come up with a suitably novel alternative: the ramble-meet. Not his name for it, we hasten to add – that’s all Diary. But here’s the gist. The callers each pick a walking route near their homes and the conversation takes place while the participants wend their separate ways. Pellatt is convinced it keeps “meetings” fresh and creative in lieu of access to any collaborative space. You can take the innovation director out of the workplace… An Englishman in Battersea One group which most definitely didn’t raise its hands just then is Battersea Power Station Community Choir. Because, while Diary has done what seems like a thousand Zoom and Microsoft Teams calls without even a hint of a celebrity guest, the choir’s regular video meets were crashed by a music industry titan: none other than Sting. Not only that, but the former Police frontman has recorded a version of “Hymn”, from his critically acclaimed musical The Last Ship, with them. “Battersea was the first place I lived when I moved to London in the 1970s,” said Sting. “The Power Station is an iconic building that reminds me of my hometown when I lived next to the shipyard. It looks like a giant ship, with those chimneys going into the river.” Check out “Hymn” by the Battersea Power Station Community Choir (and Sting) at bpwrstn.com/sting Holidays with benefits? We’re sure it is true that the “highly lucrative UK staycation market is expected to boom post-lockdown”, as we are informed by Aria Resorts. And it may well be the case that there are “bolthole bargains” to be had for those who move fast, with “compact holiday properties” available from just £20,000. But it’s a little more surprising to hear that UK residents could immediately discover “holidays with benefits”. We don’t think Aria means that quite how it sounds…