Leisure hunt closer to home Editorial
Iwas meant to be in Australia over the past week. If I hadn’t pulled out a few weeks ago after getting an uneasy feeling, I’d be stuck with no idea when I’d be returning home. Trans-Tasman travel was already a little risky, but the highly transmissible Delta variant of Covid-19 (which originated in India ) has introduced much more complexity.
Will Australia get its cases under control? Or will the coronavirus continue to bubble away, leading to more pauses in travel? And can New Zealand keep its Covid-free run going?
I’m hoping that by October, as vaccine rates on both sides of the Tasman reach more than 50 per cent of the population, the risk of lockdowns and travel pauses will lessen substantially. And with that, more Kiwis will head to Australia for leisure. But until then, I suspect many of us will be looking closer to home for a break.
Enter the school holidays, which start next weekend. Let me tell you a story. I was an annoying kid. Back in 2014, in my former life as a political reporter, Pam Corkery famously called me a ‘‘puffed-up little s...’’ on national television.
Questions are the oxygen of journalism, and if you’re on the receiving end of them, they can be overwhelming. I’ve never been short of a question, which goes right back to childhood.
Every morning of the school holidays, I’d ask my parents what we’d be doing today, as if they had a duty to entertain. I expected them to have an answer, or they’d face a barrage of other questions. Looking back, it must have been annoying. Perhaps Pam was right.
So, I’m attempting to atone for my sins by helping out parents with a few escapes for kids these school holidays on pages 36 and 37. Or, if you need an escape from the kids, I’ve got a few ideas for that too.