Jet off for summer sun? Give me a break

EVERY so often, when the rain is pouring down or the cabin fever of five months at my kitchen table starts to creep in, I take myself off to a website full of webcams overlooking some of Rome’s finest sights.

Here is the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps a brilliant white. There’s the Trevi fountain, its waters gleaming in the sunshine, empty of the usual thronging crowds. And there’s the Colosseum, its curved walls as wide and imperious as the day they were built, almost 2,000 years ago.

This is where we spent our last summer holiday, nearly a year ago now. We enjoyed long days wandering the hot streets, and magical evenings sipping negronis on the terrace, watching as the sun sank behind the rooftops.

These musings are as close to a summer holiday as I will get this year. Any negronis will be inexpertly made up in the kitchen, to be drunk in our tiny back garden. The beating sun exists only in my imagination.

Clearly, not everyone feels the same way. This week, thousands have been forced to return early from holidays in Spain after the Government’s lastminute U-turn on quarantining.

Many are furious, complaining that there should have been more notice, or that the guidelines should not have changed in the first place.

But are they really that surprised? Was this not always on the cards? Or did they think everything would suddenly be miraculously right as rain?

Look, I get it. If ever there was a year when we all needed a break – a proper break, away from the stress – it is 2020. We’re exhausted. Some of us are grieving. Others have lost jobs or livelihoods. The most deserving of all – our incredible key workers who have done so much for this country during this time – need it more than any of us.

And yet we are not out of the woods yet. The partial lockdowns announced over great swathes of northern England easily tell us that. Compromises still have to be made. We are all – apparently – still in this together.

Can we really not go one measly summer without a holiday in the sun?

Could we not use the opportunity to explore our own beautiful country instead?

I must say I was surprised at the numbers of people who hopped on a plane to Spain the moment the guidelines were relaxed, blithely believing that everything would be A-OK and there would be no consequences for themselves or their communities.

And it got me thinking. Isn’t it time for us to start applying some critical thinking of our own?

Some personal responsibility? Some of us have been wearing face masks in shops since March. Not because it was mandatory but because, looking at the evidence, it seemed like a reasonable idea and what the heck, it couldn’t hurt, right?

Others decided they would just go ahead and miss the shops completely, setting up online accounts to get their shopping instead.

Across the country, people are taking all sorts of precautionary measures to make them feel safe.

Wiping down their shopping, wearing gloves, not tracking outside shoes indoors. None of these are in the official guidelines, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, either.

Indeed, the Government guidelines, as we’ve seen time and time again, are constantly changing.

AT TIMES, our leaders have seemed as much in the dark as the rest of us. Doesn’t that mean that we should all be taking a little responsibility around this ourselves?

There is a sense, in some quarters, that we must go on living life as normal, that to do otherwise is somehow ‘giving in’ to the virus when we should be rallying that great British bulldog spirit. This seems like madness. Fortune does not always favour the brave. Just ask Boris Johnson.

My summer holiday this year should have been my honeymoon. Instead, both wedding and honeymoon are long since cancelled, postponed – we hope – until next year.

And while you will hear me complaining – usually to a girlfriend over Zoom after several G&Ts – I am also reconciled to the decision, comfortable that we have made the right choice for us and our guests.

Rome – because yes, we had planned to return to Rome – can wait. So can the big white dress.

I know that for many people, summer just isn’t a holiday without a bit of sun.

But the thing is, if we all take just a little more personal responsibility and learn to live with the situation right now, isn’t it far more likely we’ll all get our summer holidays next year?