Oh for a UK seaside with Delhi weather

LIKE MILLIONS presumably across the country the CO and I have been wondering whether we will get a summer holiday and if so where.The brochures pour in but we know enough to be aware the photos are always idyllic. It’s the getting there and back that has us shaking our heads.

The terms and conditions seem to change daily and certainly weekly. I have a windcheater with Turks and Caicos on the chest, but I think that’s as close as I’ll get to the tropics.

The big nightmare is getting to the faraway resort to find there has been another “spike” here or there and the return home will be met with a sternfaced demand to go into a fortnight’s lockdown at the airport – a miserable two weeks in a tiny room at our own expense. A liner cruise? But these usually start with a flight to the boarding port and could be impounded by a new outbreak. Cowards to a fault, and too old to play Russian roulette, we have decided to stick to a hotel with sweeping sea views and looked after by the staff. Right here in England.Then if worst ever came to worst we could jump into the car and be home in a few hours.

That poses more problems.Which resort, which hotel and do they have room? The best, with a seafacing suite, have never been so sought-after.

The idea came to me of a large picture of the sea hung at the bottom of the garden but the CO threw something at me. Only joking, but with the travel and entertainment industries struggling with humungous losses, deposits are high and probably non-returnable. And with snow blizzards in April our English climate is, as usual, having a larf.There are rental properties of course, but the CO wants to be looked after, not exchange

one load of housework for another. There are country manors converted to hotels, but her ladyship wants the sea air and no substitutes.

We have already discounted big seaside cities in favour of strollable

villages with a pub and a quayside eaterie. But so has everybody else. If I could find the swine who gave us all Covid-19 there would be a most unpleasant incident.

But maybe the end of summer when the roads de-clog, the forest

of rules are a bad memory, the kids are back at school and there are a few rooms available… then we just need an Indian summer in September.

The power of prayer is going to be seriously tested this year.