Staying at home

I haven’t been particularly creative this week. We were supposed to be in Lanzarote, cancelling just a few days before the Canary islands came out of the quarantine rules, and then we were about to book in an isolated cottage in North Cornwall, before Dominic Cummings instructed Boris Johnson to punish me for calling him a lying toad – and worse – over his own lockdown trip to Durham. I wasn’t ‘gutted’ or ‘devastated’ as some folk say they are after suffering minor disappointments and setbacks. Just a tad disappointed. That disappointment gradually disappeared as the week went on and I managed to enjoy my week off. The truth is that during this awful pandemic, I would much rather be at home than anywhere else.

I know that if we had been on a Canary island adjacent to Africa this week, my thoughts would not have been far from home. I know that Lanzarote is desperately quiet at the moment and mask-wearing is compulsory every time you leave your accommodation, even in the open air. I’m not sure that swimming pools are open, either. The inconvenience and stress would probably have been a distraction at least. In Cornwall, we’d have been alert to our woeful government changing the rules at any time and. wrecking the holiday a day or two in. Perhaps, it was a blessing from some non-existent God, after all? (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.)

We’ve been out and about this week, doing lots of walking and the odd bit of shopping, always as socially distant as we can manage it. But the pleasure and the relief is always when we get back to our house and lock the door and we’re safe again.

If I didn’t have to work, I’d be happy to do this until a safe and effective vaccine, plus an effective treatment, for COVID-19 is widely available. Yes, I know this is likely to be no sooner than the middle of next year, or maybe after that, but my ambition at the moment is not much beyond actually making old age.

This time around, despite the disastrous failings of the privatised track and trace service, I know a lot of people who have been infected by the virus and, like last time, those who have died of it. Although I don’t spend any time fretting about the effect it could have on me, I am not unaware that to an elderly chronic asthmatic (me) COVID-19 can be fatal. A distant Canary island and a not too distant Cornish cottage can wait.