First-time buyers: how will coronavirus crisis affect our move?

We’re due to move at the end of April and don’t know if this qualifies as essential travel

Q We are in the process of buying our first house, with our expected moving in date at the end of April 2020. We are wondering whether, in this current coronavirus climate, moving house counts as “essential travel”. Equally, will removal companies and cleaning companies (which we will require for our end of tenancy clean) be up and running, and classed as essential services? Many thanks, and I hope you can answer our query.
AM

A government guidance published on 26 March 2020 is silent on whether moving house counts as essential travel. What it does make clear is that people who haven’t yet exchanged contracts on a property purchase should put off doing so. Those, like you, who have exchanged contracts can go ahead if the move is to an unoccupied house. Otherwise you should take steps to delay your completion date to which end the government is “working with conveyancers to develop a standard legal process for moving completion dates”. If moving is unavoidable because you’re not able to agree a delay, you must follow advice on social distancing when moving. For the staff of removal firms this could be easier said than done. Given the size of most domestic furniture, two people carrying a chest of drawers, for example, are going to be a lot less than two metres apart; ditto sitting together in the cab of the removal lorry.

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Birds, buds and bright days: how spring can make us healthier and happier

Longer, lighter days can help us banish old habits, sleep better and improve our mental health, even during the lockdown

Thank goodness that, in this time of crisis, it is now spring. In the northern hemisphere, at least, we can say hello to green shoots, flowers, bumblebees and butterflies. Finally, the clocks have gone back to British Summer Time. We’ve lost an hour of sleep, but hello, light.

The greatest hope for the new season this year is that better weather will start to make it harder for coronavirus to spread. And for those lucky enough to still have their health, spring can provide other consolations. Its strong sense of a new beginning nudges our outlook and actions in welcome ways. Katherine Milkman, a behavioural scientist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the phenomenon and found that there is more to spring cleaning than the sunlight suddenly showing up cobwebs and window smears. “The start of spring generally makes us feel more motivated – it’s a so-called ‘fresh start date’,” she says. As such, it makes us feel less connected to the past. “That disconnect gives us a sense that whatever we messed up on previously, we can get right now. Maybe the old you failed to quit smoking or start a lasting exercise routine, but the new you can do it.”

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Birds, buds and bright days: how spring can make us healthier and happier

Longer, lighter days can help us banish old habits, sleep better and improve our mental health, even during the lockdown

Thank goodness that, in this time of crisis, it is now spring. In the northern hemisphere, at least, we can say hello to green shoots, flowers, bumblebees and butterflies. Finally, the clocks have gone back to British Summer Time. We’ve lost an hour of sleep, but hello, light.

The greatest hope for the new season this year is that better weather will start to make it harder for coronavirus to spread. And for those lucky enough to still have their health, spring can provide other consolations. Its strong sense of a new beginning nudges our outlook and actions in welcome ways. Katherine Milkman, a behavioural scientist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the phenomenon and found that there is more to spring cleaning than the sunlight suddenly showing up cobwebs and window smears. “The start of spring generally makes us feel more motivated – it’s a so-called ‘fresh start date’,” she says. As such, it makes us feel less connected to the past. “That disconnect gives us a sense that whatever we messed up on previously, we can get right now. Maybe the old you failed to quit smoking or start a lasting exercise routine, but the new you can do it.”

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Earthly delights: gardening in a time of crisis

Gardens have been a lifelong comfort for Olivia Laing. In these uncertain times, she welcomes their green embrace more than ever

Gardens have been the anchor and mainstay of my life, the most enduring source of fascination and pleasure. I started young. My father is a besotted plantsman and after my parents divorced in the early 1980s he spent custody weekends taking me and my younger sister to every open garden within 50 miles of the M25. We whiled away wet Saturdays in the hothouses at Kew, trying to persuade the butterflies to land on our fingers. I learned my first botanical name at RHS Wisley one winter afternoon, lured by the rich fragrance emitting from a nondescript shrub with tiny clusters of shell-pink flowers – Daphne odora ‘Warblington’, a name that has lodged with me ever since.

I was an anxious and not very happy child, and I loved the spell of self-forgetfulness that happens in a garden – the sense of being wholly absorbed, lifted out of time. The places I was most drawn to were shaggy, a little wild around the edges. I agreed with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s manifesto in The Secret Garden: a garden loses all its magic if it becomes too spick and span. It must feel half-forgotten, sunk in slumber. You have to be able to lose yourself, to forget the outside world; to feel, as Burnett put it, hundreds of miles from anyone, but not lonely at all.

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Earthly delights: gardening in a time of crisis

Gardens have been a lifelong comfort for Olivia Laing. In these uncertain times, she welcomes their green embrace more than ever

Gardens have been the anchor and mainstay of my life, the most enduring source of fascination and pleasure. I started young. My father is a besotted plantsman and after my parents divorced in the early 1980s he spent custody weekends taking me and my younger sister to every open garden within 50 miles of the M25. We whiled away wet Saturdays in the hothouses at Kew, trying to persuade the butterflies to land on our fingers. I learned my first botanical name at RHS Wisley one winter afternoon, lured by the rich fragrance emitting from a nondescript shrub with tiny clusters of shell-pink flowers – Daphne odora ‘Warblington’, a name that has lodged with me ever since.

I was an anxious and not very happy child, and I loved the spell of self-forgetfulness that happens in a garden – the sense of being wholly absorbed, lifted out of time. The places I was most drawn to were shaggy, a little wild around the edges. I agreed with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s manifesto in The Secret Garden: a garden loses all its magic if it becomes too spick and span. It must feel half-forgotten, sunk in slumber. You have to be able to lose yourself, to forget the outside world; to feel, as Burnett put it, hundreds of miles from anyone, but not lonely at all.

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A room with a review: critics on the art of home working

For those who write about culture for a living, working from home is a way of life. Pre-lockdown, the Observer’s film, art, dance, architecture and theatre critics discussed their jobs

The experts’ experts - our writers on their most-trusted sources

“Every now and then, in the middle of Tuesday afternoon, when you’ve seen a run of really bad films – Mighty Pups, say, followed by some terrible Michael Bay movie – and you’re scuttling from one screening room to another, and it’s raining, and you’ve got a deadline, and you’ve been up since 5am, and you think: ‘Ohhh, life is so hard!’ But then you go: ‘Hang on a minute…’” Mark Kermode takes a breath and reflects on his professional fortunes. “When I went to the school careers office, they told me I should probably work in an insurance office. Instead,” – he draws the next six words out for emphasis – “I watch films for a living. Which is astonishing to me. I should never ever complain about the job that I have, because I have the best job in the world.”

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If you have to self-isolate… then why not self-propagate, too

Three easy ways to clone your houseplants

For those of us who have to self-isolate in the coming months, gardening can be a great escape. A growing body of research suggests that being around plants can reduce stress and anxiety, thus gardening can provide not only a welcome distraction from the headlines, but much-needed signs of growth, new life and positivity.

The best news is, you don’t even need a garden to get these benefits. The beauty of houseplants is that even people like me, who might otherwise be looking at four walls and Netflix for weeks on end, can benefit from horticultural therapy. So, in that spirit, here are a range of houseplants you can propagate at home right now to lift your spirits. Home propagation is also an excellent way to get new plants for free.

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