Here we go again?

Having spent all of four weeks back in Britain after our holiday in Croatia and having done next to nothing in the meantime, I feel the need for another holiday. “A holiday from what?” you might reasonably ask and the best I can come up with is a holiday from nothing. Anyway, I’ve spent a week or so checking options and availability and have arrived at a crossroads. This is not as simple as it seems.

Finally getting a holiday in the sun felt like a revelation. Stuck at home for the best part of 18 months had turned me into a hermit and the freedom to travel was a kind of blessing. We couldn’t take a two week holiday now, but a week, maybe? But then I thought about the very thing that has been preventing overseas travel: Covid-19. And not just the fact that it’s still here, but the even more depressing fact that the UK currently has more new cases than anywhere on Earth.

The testing requirements have been eased by our government since our overseas trip so on the face of it things will be easier and cheaper, but will they? The vaccines are certainly doing their job in reducing, though not preventing, death, with around 900 people dying every week and over 5000 being admitted to hospital. But here’s the thing: yesterday there were nearly 50,000 known new infections. As we return to our offices and meet indoors with relatives and friends, it is hard to imagine figures doing anything other than rising. In planning a cheap and cheerful overseas break – and loads of them are available – the pessimistic side of me fears something will have to give and where Boris Johnson’s spokesman says there are “no current plans” to reintroduce restrictions, you quickly observe that “current” is doing all the heavy lifting. Is it worth gambling on booking something that may be cancelled, as happened throughout last year and this? My answer is no, so what about a break at home?

For one thing, it is far more expensive to holiday at home. Rail travel is prohibitively expensive, many hotels are absurdly expensive and decent self-catering accommodation of a comparable standard to what you might get abroad. Oh and there’s the weather. I reckon four days in a decent Airbnb property, along with the fact that everything is so expensive in rip-off Britain, would cost way, way more than, say a week in a Canary island.

So now we’re oohing and ahing about what to do, with the proverbial conclusion looming right in front of us: if in doubt, kick it out. In other words, have a staycation, which is to say not staying away anywhere.

These are very much modern problems fuelled by the uncertainty the pandemic has inflicted upon all of us. And the government’s pitiful record in vaccinating young people and getting booster jabs into people will surely have disastrous consequences.

For weeks and months we’ve come to the conclusion that the pandemic is over and real life is back forever. I am not a betting man but if I were I’d stake the house on the return of restrictions, probably before Christmas which of course like last Christmas will not apply to Johnson.

I hope I’m wrong but it does feel like ‘here we go again’ and we might just be going nowhere this autumn.