My staycation was like a week-long quarantine for one day of a holiday

If you were told you had to do a week’s quarantine just for one day’s holiday, would you still go ahead? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since my own holiday the week before last – and it was in Ireland.

To set the scene, I was supposed to spend that week in Dubrovnik. When my elder sister was 50, a gang of 25 of us went to Zadar. She lives in England and since family and friends from both countries would be attending, we realised it would be cheaper – for everything from accommodation to food and drinks – to meet up in Croatia rather than pay Irish or UK prices in August, and we’d get a bit of sunshine too. Indeed, her four-course birthday dinner, with a glass of Prosecco thrown in, was €28 a head.

We had such a good time, we decided to do exactly the same thing for her 60th, but the coronavirus put a stop to that. Since we had the week off anyway, my other sister and I decided to rent a holiday house in east Clare, on the shores of Lough Derg. It was an upside-down house, the bedrooms downstairs, with an upstairs living and dining area that opened onto a large deck. I had visions of sitting there, reading books and drinking Aperol spritzes as balmy sunsets brought the last days to a close.

Ha! Within an hour of us arriving, the rain was pelting down on that very deck. On the Sunday, it eased off, and at one stage I looked out and my sister indeed was in a reclining chair, albeit wrapped in a blanket. We went to a pub for dinner and it was depressing, with the bar taped off like a crime scene and the courses practically flung at us on Frisbees to stay within the 105 allotted minutes.

It rained again on the Monday, but the Tuesday was bright and clear, and we had a lovely day, visiting the St Tola goat farm that produces wonderful cheese, before heading to the Cliffs of Moher, Lahinch and Ennistymon.

It was just as well, because the Wednesday was wet again, and we spent the day watching old episodes of Modern Family and Will Ferrell’s Eurovision movie on Netflix.

Increasingly bored and with Storm Ellen already making her presence felt, I decided to go to bed soon after 11pm with a book. I barely had started the first chapter when the power went out, and when my sister knocked on the door and asked what we should do, I decided there was only one thing for it. So I got back up and we opened a bottle of wine and sat up talking for hours.

My own home is single storey, so when I finally decided to turn in again, the darkened stairs proved to be a puzzle I couldn’t solve, and I slipped on the first one. I grabbed the bannister, but still managed to crash into the wall, leaving a bruise the size of a football on my hip and a cut on my arm. When I woke up and stepped out of bed, I realised I had also badly bruised my heel, and couldn’t put my weight on it at all.

The power was still gone, so we couldn’t shower, couldn’t watch television and could barely read because it was so gloomy all day.

Nor could we cook, so dinner was cold leftover sausage with a salad made from leftover potatoes.

The power finally came back just after midnight (and fair play to the ESB Networks crews who go out in all weathers to fix fallen lines) but enough was enough. On the Friday morning, the small estate was dotted with fallen branches and we packed up and left for home a day early. Along the back roads, there was enough foliage debris to decorate a hundred Santa’s grottoes, and when I looked at Lough Derg, it was gunmetal grey and dotted with angry whitecaps, looking for all the world like the sea rather than a lake.

Honestly, I’ve never been so glad to be home. The notion of holidaying in Ireland is a lovely one, but from now on it will be in a country house hotel with a roaring fire and weatherproof indoor activities and I will insist on enquiring if it has its own generator too.

Because though I’m as happy as anyone to pull on that green jersey, effectively being quarantined for six days to get one day of good weather is not a ratio that makes for a happy holiday. In fact, leaving aside the calamitous political implications, I can’t work out why Phil Hogan was bothered at all, when he could just have stayed in Belgium.