Stuck in the Midlands with you: A local lockdown put an end to our family staycation
With hindsight, I should have known something bad was on the horizon. The Sunday before we were due to go on holidays, my wife, the kids, and I drove to Dún Laoghaire. We made sure to arrive early, before the crowds.
Amid the very occasional sunshine, life seemed almost normal. We got coffee, a take-out meal. I even nipped into a record store and purchased the Fontaines DC album, doing my bit for their ultimately fruitless Blur v Oasis tussle with The Coronas to reach number one.
It wasn’t entirely like the old days, to be clear. Everyone was clearly slightly on edge. Facemasks were ubiquitous. Our quest for a public loo threatened to descend into a remake of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, until we thought of nipping into the shopping centre.
But still, it seemed like a positive omen for our upcoming week back in Cork where we could catch up — at a distance — with family. That was still the case the following Friday morning as I tried to get through all my work while my wife and the kids packed. This time tomorrow we would be leaving Kildare and driving to Cork. Has a sweeter sentence ever been written in the English language?
You know the punchline. All day Friday reports had swirled about a huge uptick in Covid cases in the Midlands. Initially I struggle to get my head around the statement. Not that there was a spiral in Coronavirus. But that Kildare was considered the Midlands.
Yes, we live a mile from a literal bog. But we moved here for the same reason many people do — because we couldn’t afford Dublin. And so in my head we have always lived in a suburb of Dublin… just a little further out.
But suddenly we were about to learn that we really, truly didn’t live in Dublin. And also that holidays were off. The kids were devastated, my wife disappointed. My own feelings were more mixed. A family member has been seriously unwell and with Coronavirus making a comeback in Kildare I would have had to stay away, for fear I was an asymptomatic carrier.
Plus, because I’m self-employed “holidays” are a nebulous concept. I’d have ended up spending most of the time working anyway, only five times as stressed as usual (that’s… quite stressed).
On Friday evening though, part of me was tempted to fling caution to the wind and try to keep one step ahead of the lockdown at midnight. It wasn’t yet 7pm. The packing was essentially done. What if we bundled everyone in the car and just drove, Mad Max: Fury Road style, for the promised (ish) land? We didn’t have any accommodation booked for that night but surely we could stay… somewhere?
The plan, let’s just say, didn’t survive peer review. And so we had to break it to the kids that they wouldn’t be seeing cousins or grandparents. The long, strange, monotonous summer of 2020 was destined to carry on, as long, strange and monotonous as ever.
Only now we couldn’t even go to Dún Laoghaire, gaze at the sea and silently disapprove of all the heroic joggers ignoring social distancing along the pier (Iron Man doesn’t know what it’s missing guys). For at least another fortnight, an exciting day out meant going to Newbridge or Naas — Maynooth if we were especially daring.
What does a summer without holidays feel like? Well, I expect a great many people are learning the answer to that.
It isn’t that the incidence of lows in your life increases dramatically.
Last week we went shopping for facemasks for the kids and lord help me, it was actually an occasion
It’s just that a few more of the highs have been snatched away. Every day is the same as that which went before. Your idea of what constitutes a thrilling departure from the norm grows increasingly desperate (last week we went shopping for facemasks for the kids and lord help me, it was actually an occasion).
All going well the Great Kildare Lockdown of 2020 will lift at the end of the original fortnight. As we emerge blinking into the light, it will be too late for holidays. Not with the schools due to reopen so soon (and that is obviously going to proceed without a single hitch).
My own opinion is that holidays are overrated (they are if you’re self-employed!). But they’re a lot better than planning for a break only to learn the night before that the shutters are coming down and that you’re confined to your adopted commuter county for days on end. In a summer of bummers, that’s right up there.