As I have previously blogged, when our holidays and overseas family visits were cancelled one by one, I can’t say we were anything more than mildly disappointed. Worse things happen at sea and in the intensive care wards of our hospitals. In the end, it was merely part of life’s rich pageant. No big deal. In the absence of overseas pleasures, we concluded we’d take a short break in this country. A small cottage somewhere, perhaps, or even a caravan holiday. We reckoned without everyone else thinking the same thing.
It turns out, there’s next to nothing available to us that’s in reasonable travelling distance. A few AIrBNB sheds at the bottom of people’s gardens and top end accommodation costing many hundreds of pounds. Sod that for a game of soldiers, we decided.
We thought, briefly, about booking a hotel somewhere nice, but we couldn’t find anywhere that we considered to be anywhere nice. And anyway, the only thing I want to do when I arrive in a hotel room is to check out. There are some fantastic offers in London, which I really didn’t have to think about. For one thing, despite the fact that trains are largely empty, GWR, our local provider and rip off artist hasn’t thought it necessary to drop their prices. So we might get a decent hotel deal but we’d also need to mortgage the house in order to afford a train ticket.
The truth be known, much as I love London in normal times, these are not normal times. London, even in working from home mode, is still more crowded than anywhere else, I don’t fancy the idea of queueing to visit attractions I don’t really want to see anyway. Walking through Bristol’s Cabot Circus shopping centre last night, the only person observing the instruction to wear a face covering I might add, was a useful reminder that London might be like that, only on steroids.
Of course, I feel for those either on a foreign holiday or in the throes of preparing for one. We’re still in that number, except that we know, in our heart of hearts, that our Canary island excursion in November isn’t going to happen. Spain is in serious trouble with serious upticks in areas such as Quesada where there are large numbers of British migrants (who call themselves ex pats). Our government, which has hardly had a great success record in dealing with COVID-19, has concluded that if one part of Spain is in bother, then we shouldn’t visit anywhere, either on the mainland or on the islands. So, unless we’re in a particularly reckless state of mind and we’re happy to travel without insurance, we can’t go there. In my case, it’s just too bad.
The uncertainty is killing consumer confidence but it is also killing the travel business, both home and abroad. Everything from the aviation industry to little cafés in Spain are in existential crisis. Our lost holidays are insignificant when compared to job losses and bankruptcies. And if I have to stay at home this year, then I’ll happily do it.
We know the risks we are taking now when we book a foreign holiday and indeed one at home. COVID-19 hasn’t gone away and it’s very likely it will be back with a vengeance in the weeks and months ahead. The more optimistic among us dream of things being better next year and we’ll go back to the old normal. I just can’t see it. Things will be better because science will come up with solutions and treatments for the virus, if not vaccines. We’ll still be giving personal details when we visit the pub and we’ll still be wearing face coverings. We’ll still get local spikes and waves and we will continue to face lockdowns and buggered up holidays. So, on that basis, we aren’t planning too far ahead. My own plan is to be alive this time next year. Holidays, like heaven, can wait.
