This coming Saturday, we were supposed to be flying to Spain for a rearranged holiday and family visit. Obviously, it’s not going to happen, as didn’t our previous effort to fly to Spain back in the spring, or our family holiday in Croatia. With a Canary Island break pencilled in for November, we are resetting family records, here. Four cancelled holidays in one year. That beats the previous record of cancelled holidays in one year by four. And you know what? I am actually relieved.
I wasn’t relieved earlier in the year when the dominoes started falling, but I quickly came to my senses, such as they are, when people started dying. I didn’t leap on to social networks to announce to a disinterested make believe world that I was ‘gutted’ or ‘devastated’. While getting older has its drawbacks, sometimes it provides better perspective and when family members and friends became ill and some died of COVID-19, my lost week long engagement with a sun bed and a cold beer didn’t really matter. They could both wait for a better day, whenever that might come.
For all that, I do realise that cancelled plans are a bit shit for some. If you have family and friends who live abroad, especially elderly family and friends, there is an additional fear that you might never see them again. Cases of the virus have effectively shut down airways to places like Spain to all but the most irresponsible and reckless, who have decided it’s absolutely hunky dory to travel without insurance. They’re not going to reopen anytime soon and even if they do, the odds are high that we too will be in the midst of a resurgence of the virus. For me, foreign travel does not remotely appeal at the moment.
This week, Portugal will be removed from the list of places our government considers it safe to go to. A week after telling people it’s perfectly fine to jet off to the Algarve, COVID-19 is back spreading like wildfire. Come Thursday, we won’t be allowed to go there and given the farce of the TUI flight from Zante, flying to Cardiff full of the virus, Greece is the word, is the word that you heard when you saw the new list of places it isn’t safe to visit. Who knows if British holidaymakers took the virus to Zante in the first place, or even caught it from the lads from Plymouth who brought home the very same virus a week or so ago? I think we know what happens next. And when the British government tells people it’s no longer safe to fly to Portugal and Greece, those countries and more will be off limits for a very long time.
Given that all of our overseas visits have fallen through this year, we have pretty well decided we won’t even bother to consider a foreign holiday next year, apart from our already twice postponed Spanish family visit. The uncertainty of whether or not we’d be able to go anywhere, whilst not being massively stressful, was certainly an irritation. We suspect that the act of travelling and then holidaying abroad when a deathly virus was still in circulation, having needed to spend extra money on health insurance for 2021 onwards when we are no longer entitled to use public health services in the EU27, is just not worth the hassle.
Many experts feel that 2021 will be much like 2020 in terms of COVID-19. It is possible there might be a vaccine, but it’s far too early to be certain. One report I read suggested that the chances of there being a vaccine available by this time next year were between 10% and 20%. If that’s the case, it would be another year of uncertainty, with the government, like this year, deciding which countries are safe to visit and which aren’t, subject to immediate change. Having had to arse about repeatedly rebooking some flights and cancelling others, I’m not sure I can be bothered to go through all that again.
Anyway, there are so many other aspects to consider. What will be the state of our economy next year? Will the holiday companies and airlines all survive into 2021 and perhaps beyond? What will our favourite holiday resorts look like? Will the hotels and restaurants keep going? We just don’t know. In the end, I return to the old footballing analogy that applies to most things in life: if in doubt, kick it out.
I didn’t think I’d be quite this relaxed about our holidays being cancelled. However, some things are just more important, like surviving the virus. Many people are enjoying a ‘staycation’ this year or are taking their holidays in the UK. (There is a difference.) There’s nothing to be feeling ‘gutted’ or devastated’ about unless something really serious has happened. 70,000 excess deaths in our country is slightly more important than losing a week’s bingo in Benidorm.
