I’m desperate for a holiday – wherever we can get to
We are told that moving house, divorce, and having a baby are the most stressful things anybody can go through but I reckon you can add preparing for a holiday to that sorry list.
While I accept that a good holiday is the ultimate destresser, I always manage to work myself into such a tizz before I go away that I am a gibbering wreck – or at least more so than usual – by the time I get to where I am going.
A combination of schoolboy-like excitement, woeful preparation, coupled with the realisation that I haven’t got enough clean undies to last the week always push me to the brink before we’ve even left the house.
Then there’s the journey.
If we are driving there is always at least one unexpected ‘detour’, which is largely due to my unwillingness to rely upon satellite technology to get us there.
Once we arrive, it is highly unusual for me not to have to visit an office or phone a disinterested gap year student to inform them of a problem with the accommodation.
Invariably, I do manage to wind down during a week off – usually by day two or three, and then it is the countdown to going home.
So, given all that, why I am so desperate to go away?
I know I am not alone, but a holiday, pretty much anywhere, feels like the only thing that might just restore my mojo after the lousiest of 12 months.
Like millions of others, we do have tentative plans to get away from it all later this year but they are just that – plans, and we all know what folk say about those.
Despite seemingly daily updates with varying dates this year for when the majority of us will have had our jabs, there are still no firm timeframe for when traveling abroad for a holiday will no longer be illegal.
We have two holidays booked: one, a late summer hop across
The Channel which was booked long before the coronavirus hit the UK last year and, for obvious reasons, was postponed last year while another, more realistic, week away self-catering on the Welsh coast is also booked.
While we know that we won’t lose money if Covid restrictions put paid to either of our planned breaks, there is gnawing anxiety that we won’t get the holiday that we believe is so richly deserved.
This is a feeling that occasionally fills me with guilt as worrying about whether or not we will get away this year while people are still dying, albeit it in far smaller numbers than they were at the peak of the outbreak, isn’t really a good look for anybody right now.
In recent weeks, several government ministers have warned against booking trips away, at least until the four key tests for lifting restrictions are met.
As it stands, the planned date for self-catering UK breaks resuming is April but I’m not holding my breath.
We are told that demand, especially for ‘staycations’ is huge but it seems that bragging about forthcoming holidays is no longer the done thing for fear of being judged by the social media pandemic police.
But, wanting to go on holiday isn’t a selfish act – it is an economic activity and we need plenty of that if we are to get the UK out of the desperate situation we are currently in.
The money is there – it is estimated that £120bn has been salted away in the past 12 months of stop-start lockdown, meaning that people can well afford a holiday and hotspots such as Cornwall, Norfolk, the Lakes and the Dales are all set to benefit.
If nothing else, it is pretty certain that the events of the past year will allow me to finally start really enjoying getting ready for a holiday.
It is estimated that £120bn has been salted away in the past 12 months of stop-start lockdown