Cut your losses now, holidays abroad are a thing of the past

There are adventures to be had closer to home. So what if it’s not a ‘proper’ break? We are not in proper times

There was almost an audible scramble of friends and neighbours in my part of town, scuttling back from France early, rushing back the moment it was announced they’d have to quarantine when they return, heaving sighs of relief when they calculated it would be over before the kids were due to start school.

Other people have rushed back from Portugal to avoid locking themselves away and have now found that, in England, it is not being added to the travel quarantine list. Cue that irrational kind of annoyance that occurs when you put yourself out to prepare and protect yourself for a Bad Thing and then the Bad Thing doesn’t happen.

It’s a bit, I imagine, like when you were a skint teenager and one day you actually bought a train ticket for once, so you don’t have to shuffle through in a crowd trying your hardest to look 12, only to find that there wasn’t an inspector on the gate that day. It was very annoying at the time. I’d brandish my ticket and insist it was thoroughly checked by a trained professional. Perhaps some travellers from Portugal can get their money’s worth by quarantining anyway. “Put Netflix on, paint a black cross on the door and order some 10 boxes of wine. WE are getting our money’s worth!”

The insistence on having a holiday abroad in the midst of a global pandemic is fascinating to me. I know people work very hard in tough jobs and look forward to a break somewhere hot and very pretty, but spending your time fretting that at any moment you might get a call saying “Right! be back by 4pm tomorrow or we’re locking you in” surely hampers the enjoyment of your third pina colada.

I know that many people have paid long in advance and some holiday companies have become quite creative with the concept of the word “refund”, but should we just cut our losses and find adventures closer to home? I mean have you been to the Isle of Skye? Nevermind another country, it feels like you’re on another planet. And If you haven’t had a pina colada in a lighthouse watching a storm in the Highlands, you haven’t lived (I haven’t done this myself by the by, it’s a dream of mine.)

When I was growing up, we went to Mallorca once and the rest of our family holidays were in Brighton, Bath, Blackpool, Cornwall, Jersey anywhere my parents could get a cheap BnB with an Honesty bar and my memories of those holidays are golden. I understand that for some, these aren’t “proper” holidays, but we are not in proper times.

Perhaps if we stopped scuttling furtively abroad for our holidays, trips to the hairdressers will be more fun too. If the answer to “Have you got any holidays planned?” is “Yes, Skegness” rather than “Barbados”, you’d both have to work a lot harder at the conversation and it would make for a more meaningful natter.

Haven’t we all had to accept that we just have to let go of some things for now? Like so many people back in March, I watched most of my work disappear with no guarantee it would come back anytime soon. Yikes! Summer holidays this year were a large paddling pool in Costa Del Ealing and an escape to the Isle of Wight the moment we were allowed.

Also, can we have a moment for single people like me who, before all this Covid stuff, had lots of fun and adventures dating? That has all gone for now and we are all adults, I don’t need to spell out the changes I have had to accept but I will say I was having a marvellous time and then I couldn’t any more.

We need to be a little more Zen about holidays right now. The decisions to put some counties on the red list and keep some as a travel corridor is ever changing and very complicated. Genuinely. I had a look before I sat down to write this and it’s a hot mess. England, Wales and Scotland have different rules now about which Greek island is OK and which is not. Going abroad to relax might be something we all have to shelve for now. Take your family to a medieval fort, embrace the ocean in the drizzle, get on a ferry and go to the Isle of Wight. A little bob across the Solent makes you feel like you’ve gone abroad with the added bonus that it’s one of the few places I know who still has BnBs with an honesty bar.