Have nerves, but will still travel
The violent clipping of travel wings in late March was so extreme for a frequent flier like me that I decided to see imprisonment in my postcode as an adventure in itself. Being confined to my flat, Hampstead Heath and, for a real thrill, Finchley Road Waitrose, was such a departure from my usual way of life that it did have an air of the exotic about it.
As the months passed, and travel began to feel like something that belonged to a lost epoch, I made my peace with it. I’d look with wonder and a strange feeling at the few planes heading for Heathrow. I contented myself with the thought of trips to Kent.
But in the past few weeks, as air bridges have emerged from the confusion of quarantines and colourcoded travel advice, friends have begun turning up on beautiful Italian beaches and posting about it on Instragram. The itch, which I have stifled these four months, has returned with venom.
All I can think about now is getting out of Blighty. It turns out that Kent isn’t the same as France or Italy – it’s lovely, but psychologically it’s not the same. I miss flying. I miss the full-body experience of landing somewhere else, drinking somebody else’s beer, hearing another language.
And so I am faced with balancing my fear of catching the virus on some dodgy Ryanair flight with the promise of where that flight can deposit me. The flight wins. Come August, I’m boarding my first flight since March (the longest period I’ve been grounded since I was a child) – a Ryanair to Aarhus, Denmark, with a new mask and fingers crossed.