I’m under ‘house arrest’ but going on holiday was definitely worth it

Iam in quarantine, aka: on the Government’s naughty step. I had the audacity to go to France, and not have the £2,000 that British Airways wanted to switch our return flight to a day earlier.

I know, I know. There’s about as much sympathy for people who choose to go abroad during a global pandemic as there is for Gavin Williamson. But like many other Brits, we had booked this holiday a year ago and couldn’t get our money back – what’s more, we didn’t actually want our money back, so desperate were we to escape the UK and all its multiple governmental failings.

Quarantine was a risk worth taking, we figured, as we put on our masks and headed for a remote part of south-west France in a “department” that had registered all of 14 (yes,

14) coronavirus cases in the previous week. We settled into the farmhouse, left only twice to go to the supermarket, and had a thoroughly lovely time that could not even be marred by the shambles of Grant Shapps announcing, very late on a Thursday, that quarantine would be brought in at 4am on Saturday. Or did he mean Sunday? Like so many of us, the Transport Secretary seemed confused by the decision he had made, issuing a series of tweets that contradicted themselves, before someone on his team who understood the 24-hour clock intervened and confirmed that it was, indeed, Saturday.

We missed the cut-off time by a matter of hours, returning from our remote farmhouse in an area virtually untouched by Covid-19, to London, a city which had just posted almost 700 new cases. Were we quarantining to protect ourselves? Meanwhile, travellers coming a few hours earlier from apparently plaguefilled Paris were free to roam around, and – crucially – walk their dog. “You do know,” said the woman at passport control (when we eventually got to her), “that you’re not allowed out at all. Not even to walk your dog.”

“We don’t have a dog,” replied my bewildered seven-yearold. The nice lady smiled, and explained we were to get any food on our way home from the airport, and if we needed anything else after that point… well, best of luck to us, safe onward journey and all that.

By this point, I was starting to feel unwell – if only because we had been queuing at passport control for some time, planes full of people coming from exempt countries mingling with people coming from quarantined ones, social distancing impossible due to the sheer number of passengers compared to the four

Border Force staff on duty. The heinously complex passenger locator forms were causing problems for even the most educated of travellers, which only added to the wait time. It was all very different to arriving in France, where we breezed through customs and out of the airport within 20 minutes.

And now, like hundreds of thousands of other Brits who fancied a bit of respite from the ludicrous handling of this pandemic, we sit under house arrest, the fear of a criminal record hanging over our heads because we went on holiday.

(I know that a holiday is not an essential, but do we really want to live in a country that’s so useless it basically has to make them a criminal offence?)

And if all of this seems puzzling coming from a supposedly libertarian Tory Government – why not test on entry like almost every other nation is doing? – then I must remind myself that this is also a Government whose “worldbeating” test-and-trace system, promised to be fully operational by June, and is still nowhere to be seen. Of course, we should have seen the writing on the wall the moment the words “worldbeating” were uttered, for here is a Government that seems to view this whole situation as the World Cup, rather than a pandemic without a cure that is heaping misery on millions.

Like so many other decisions made by this lot, quarantine is a blunt instrument wielded in an attempt to make up for its many failings. The predicament of holidaymakers may elicit little sympathy from those of you who have chosen to stay at home, but it is symptomatic of something far bigger, and that is the willingness of Boris et al to pass the buck of their incompetence to anyone else but themselves: PHE; Ofqual; civil servants; and now, even, the people who elected them.

“Only travel if you are content to unexpectedly 14-day quarantine if required,” tweeted Shapps this week. “I speak from experience!” (I would be fascinated to know if Shapps expensed his flight home from Spain last month, taken early so he could begin his isolation as quickly as possible.) Meanwhile, as our eyes turn to an apparent second wave in evil, dangerous Europe, we can for a moment forget the problem in our own backyard: namely, how difficult it is to quarantine a cat you long ago let out of the bag.

We returned from an area with 14 cases, to London, a city with 700 new cases