Let’s face it ...we could ALL do with a holiday in the sun
I’M not sure I can get on board with the idea that the Scottish Government is ‘inhumane’ for suspending fertility treatment for women who refuse to accept Covid vaccinations. IVF is, of course, a deeply personal and emotive topic. But surely, as a prospective mother, the most humane thing you can do for you and your future baby is protect yourself with the jab?
MY HUSBAND and I got engaged three years ago this week. If you had told me then, as he opened up the ring box and asked the eternal question, that we would end up delaying our wedding for a year and having a sixday honeymoon in the Lake District, I would have thought the world had ended.
And yet those six sundrenched days in the Lakes in late August 2021 – we drove down just two days after the wedding, still giddy and excitable – felt like the most precious gift. A cool glass of water after a long, dry drought.
The pandemic has changed us all in ways both good and bad. Among the good is the ability to relish small pleasures in new ways. A hug from a friend. A pint at the bar. A haircut. All the little things – not so little it turns out – we took for granted before March 2020 and value now more than ever.
At the top of many people’s list of things they have missed out on since all this started is a foreign holiday. In our first years together my husband and I were lucky enough to embark on some wonderful adventures. To the American south, where we wandered the streets of New Orleans in the rain and ate fried chicken in Nashville. To Japan, where we visited the remains of Hiroshima and meditated at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto. To Italy, twice, because we love it dearly.
And it was to Italy we had planned to return for our honeymoon. First to Rome, then Naples, and on to the village where my husband’s grandfather came from to visit relatives and show them pictures of the wedding.
Like so many other holiday plans however, it was not to be. Most of us have simply abandoned the thought of going abroad the past two years, with thousands of foreign holidays cancelled or reluctantly shelved ‘until this is all over’.
And it is certainly true that in some ways that has brought its own pleasures. The joy of rediscovering the United Kingdom and its many beauties has been for many, including ourselves, a huge treat.
But there is something special about discovering a new country, or returning to one that you love, not to mention spending time in a place where you can bank on the sun remaining in the sky for more than 20 minutes at a time. And so the announcement this week that almost all foreign travel testing rules are to be scrapped in Scotland will be a boon to anyone eyeing a trip abroad this summer.
As of yesterday, those arriving from overseas will no longer have to take a test before departure if fully vaccinated or aged under 18. And from tomorrow, doublejabbed travellers will no longer have to take expensive PCR tests on day two after arrival.
We may have missed out on a foreign honeymoon but our situation pales into insignificance compared to that of so many others. Those with family abroad who they have seen only on screens for an achingly long time. Children growing fast without a hug from granny or grandpa. Unsaid goodbyes because loved ones were not allowed in the country, never mind the hospital.
THEN there is the older generation, many of whom have felt cheated out of what could be their last few opportunities to travel abroad, worried that by the time travelling is again feasible their bodies may no longer be up to it. And little ones, for whom abroad remains a strange, unknowable place.
So perhaps then, the greatest thing about these latest relaxations is that they give us something that has been sorely lacking throughout this pandemic: hope. Hope that we might just be finding our way out of this. That good things are on the way. That it could be time to get out the holiday brochures, just for a look.
I will always treasure our honeymoon as a magical time in a beautiful place. But I’m also already planning our sojourn to Italy this summer, and calling it a second honeymoon. Because honestly, if you wait this long, why not do it twice?