“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”

Never has a John Lennon lyric been more profound, and that from a man who wrote some of the best lyrics we are ever likely to hear.

But here we are in March 2020 and after a blistering first 10 weeks we were all planning for what promised to be a fantastic year for us all. And then life happened. We have gone from getting ready for the best award ceremony in town to now being house-bound, corralled by the Coronavirus and reliant on someone, somewhere to try and come up with an antidote for COVID-19.

The current global health scare is Mother Nature’s timely reminder that it is she who decides the order of the food chain.

It might feel like one, but unfortunately this is not a Hollywood blockbuster. I wish it was because I’d be hiding behind Gerard Butler right now. If there were ever a time I wish I were related to Bear Grylls this is it. My ‘E’ grade in woodwork is unlikely to see me through this all on its own.

We live in unprecedented times and no one really knows what to do, which is actually scarier than the event itself.

I think we stand on the precipice of some of the most spectacular, unheralded and almost unbelievable government and central bank action ever seen. What we witnessed in 2008 turned out to be a dry run for today. What we need now is a new rule book . The law, legislation and current way of doing things are becoming more out-dated by the day if not the hour. The domino has been pushed and unless co-ordinated, global collaboration is undertaken then no one will escape the tumbling of the domino next to them.

Ah well that’s globalisation for you. The army have a saying: “Everyone has a plan until it goes wrong”.

Life has a habit of levelling things when we least expect it and in a short space of time we have the equality we have all been craving, the billionaires and the paupers, the famous and the infamous, those with toilet paper and those without.

Nick Heyward once asked “where do we go from here” and I do firmly believe that where there is activity there is hope. We have to partake in life even when we don’t always like or agree with what it seems to be offering us.

We sit on a rock travelling at 67,000 mph through a void whose existence, no one can explain. Over 100 billion have come before us and let us hope another 100 billion will follow. This now becomes our time as a species, our personal little Agincourt and it will be one that history will judge and define us by. So I say we tackle this with good humour, resilience and belief in ourselves. Who knows, we may even be donning our tuxedos and ball gowns sooner than we thought.

Martin Stewart, director, The Money Group