A YEAR OF TWO HALVES

Alan Cochrane bemoans the loss of his keenly anticipated annual family holiday in France

Call me a pathetic creature of habit, if you like, but I admit that I’m a stickler for the ‘same old, same old’. It’s possibly a feature of great age and if so there’s not a lot I can do about it.

I essentially divide my time nowadays into large chunks in which the year is divided roughly into two. One chunk sees me looking forward and planning, often frantically, for Christmas and New Year. The other major segment involves me anticipating, preparing for and budgeting for our family holiday.

Of late there have been mini highlights, too, involving trips that three friends and I make to the battlefields of Northern Europe. The latest ended in disaster when we had to beat a hasty retreat from Flanders in March when Belgium and then France went into lockdown. But although these are always great fun, I could probably live without them – something I couldn’t possibly do with the ‘majors’.

In relation to the second of these – holidays – a great deal more later.

First things first. I effectively begin my Yuletide preparations almost as soon as we get back from France at the beginning of August. And top of my list – there’s always a list – is ‘who’s coming to stay?’ Various options are considered, with the qualities and advantages of the ‘possibles’ weighed up against those of the ‘probables’ and ‘definites’. This discussion continues for some weeks and then we finally decide to have – guess what? – the same-old same-olds we have every year.

Then there’s the question of Christmas and New Year parties. Once again I convene what I reckon to be a family summit of who we’re going to invite this year – weighing up perceived slights and/or good turns by friends and neighbours before deciding – yes, you’ve guessed it again – on probably exactly the same people that we have every year. After all, it’s safer that way.

Mind you, if Christmas comes but once a year so, too, does our family holiday – the biggie, that is. Daughters seem always heading off to exotic spots, at least they were before lockdown, and so the first thing that has to be asked nowadays is whether they’re joining Mum and Dad this year – or have they managed to wangle a better offer from friends?

It’s not as if they don’t know where we’ll be going.

We always head for the Ardeche, which as everyone knows is in the north of the south of France, for precisely the same village, with exactly the same neighbours and, of recent years, for exactly the same rented house. Oh yes, and we always go for the exact same two-and-a-bit weeks in July. Predictable? Yes. Sad? Possibly. But I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.

All of that said, the tragedy is that the Europe-wide lockdown has put a huge question mark over this year’s holiday, which is what I’ve set my heart on ever since that first week of January when the last of the Yuletide guests departed.

At time of writing things look pretty grim. I don’t fancy flying – indeed I never fancy flying – and, anyway, the airlines don’t appear to know which of them will be flying and to where. The ferry companies are in a state of flux; some are operating, some are not. But those that are operating have to fit in with the entry restrictions of destination countries – restrictions which currently keep tourists away.

President Macron of France has said he’ll ease the lockdown but the present plan – applicable until early June – would permit its citizens a bit more freedom but would only allow residents to travel 100kms, instead of the present 1km, from their home. That’s not much good for someone like me hoping to travel maybe 1,000kms through his fair land. He’s also raised the spectre of a two-week quarantine when crossing the Channel, which chills my blood.

Furhter complicating matters is the attitude of the ferry company with whom I’m hoping to travel. They’ll take my booking for mid-July but only if I stump up in full. And if an extended lockdown means they can’t take me all I’d get back is a voucher for another trip, rather than my money back. That’s no good.

Why won’t they accept a deposit from me now and the full fare when I actually travel. That way we’re both covered, n’est-ce-pas?

A summer without a holiday in the sun just doesn’t bear thinking about.

“I’ve had my heart set on my summer holiday since our Yuletide guests departed