“Your everlasting summer,” wrote Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, in their legendary tune, Reelin’ In The Years, “You can see it fading fast.” They weren’t singing about my summer which, with just over three weeks to go, appears already to have faded away completely, peering as I do through endless rain to the battleship grey clouds. We do have a holiday booked in the early weeks of autumn but I don’t intend to say much about it on here or on social media because it just doesn’t feel right. Holidays in 2021 have become largely the preserve of “THE BETTER OFF”, which, somewhat laughably, appears to include me, someone who has never got close to earning the national average wage after 47 years in work. But facts are, as they say, facts and this excellent article in today’s Observer puts things into context.
It would not require a great deal of detective work to see that my social media pages have been crammed over the years with holiday photos. Here’s me in Greece, here’s me in Spain, here’s me in Croatia and so on. Well, not that many of me, to be honest, because what I see in the mirror does not bear sharing with an audience which might just have had its dinner. Where others see beauty in their selfies, I see the opposite. But that’s beside the point. After such an awful 18 months or so, do I really want to rub people’s noses in it?
We have had one overnight stay away from home since the autumn of 2019. The virus has meant one long ‘staycation’* because you literally weren’t allowed to go anywhere, unless you were fabulously lucky grabbing a break in between lockdowns. To be honest, I counted myself lucky just to have so far survived a virus that has taken over 150,000 people, so holidays could wait. For many, they are still waiting.
I certainly feel that I need a holiday, but probably not as much as those who have worked flat out on the frontline, often earning miserably low wages who now find that thanks to rip off Britain and the rip off private Covid testing companies making millions from people who want some different scenery for a week or two they can’t afford to.
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy seeing people’s holiday photos, particularly interesting sights and places and this piece isn’t a harsh critique of those who like to share their entire lives on social media. It’s me who’s changed, not anyone else. If I thought just one person, who couldn’t have a holiday this year, looked at my timeline and thought, “Well, he’s overdoing it a bit while I’m taking annual leave within the four walls that surround me” I’d be mortified.
If we do make it abroad, there might be the odd nice view, but I am not going to take the piss and boast that I’m “living the dream” while you are living an ongoing nightmare, where every single day feels exactly the same and the light at the end of the tunnel is an onrushing express.
*Your occasional reminder that a ‘staycation’ does not mean having a holiday in the UK. It means staying at home.
