Go abroad for a summer holiday? Give me a break!

CAN someone please explain to me why anybody would want to go abroad on holiday this summer?

I don’t mean because this fair isle is so wondrous, ‘why would we ever venture further ashore?’

I definitely believe we have handled this pandemic so badly that most places are probably safer than here, too.

No, it’s the sheer hassle of it all. Like, can you honestly be bothered?

Because the stress is two-fold. Our lives have all become so much more pared down this year.

Months spent at home without commuting to work.

No school runs to contend with. Weekends crammed with endless activities have been non-existent.

We have become used to life without the logistical nuisances of yore.

Are we equipped to be thrown back into the maelstrom of package-holiday mayhem?

The flight delays. Lost luggage. Drunken hen do fights at 7am.

Surely it will all be a shock to our already enervated systems?

Then, of course, there are the new world hassles of pandemic travel.

The holy grail of acquiring a PCR test with valid certificate to board a plane in the first place to a destination actually on the Governmentapproved list, so we don’t get turned away at boarding. So that’s £150 per person.

Which in our family is £1,000 down before we have even entered the airport.

The proof of purchase and results have to be printed out on paper, not just on a phone screen. So yet more inconvenience.

Let’s not forget those passenger locator forms!

Hope you brought a few extra biros in your hand luggage, mate.

Say you actually get the aeroplane to take off with you on it, will the accommodation you booked be the place you end up staying at?

If not, how much extra will it cost for these mandatory changes?

I’ll tell you something else I don’t understand but would deffo require clarity on – if

someone is hospitalised with Covid while away, who pays for the medical care?

Or are we about to see an abundance of Gofundme pages to dig people out of this particular financial hole?

Now let’s suppose miracles occur and the entire vacation goes without incident.

To return to good old Blighty you still need a negative rapid antigen detection test.

The great news is that if you say Rapid Antigen Detection Test in a deep voice you sound like a superhero.

The bad news is the palaver it is to book these tests 48 hours before flying, in a country where (quite rightly) nobody is obliged to explain the intricacies of this in English.

Even if the results do come through in a couple of hours and only cost a third of the test needed to fly out of the UK, good luck finding a printer to evidence these results at check-in, by the way.

I struggle to find a working printer in my own house, never mind in Portugal.

I suppose I understand the urge for serial globetrotters to spread their wings at the very first opportunity.

People accustomed to submerging themselves in other cultures, regularly and who see it as vital to their well-being.

However, we don’t have an international reputation for such fancies, do we?

No, our fancy is more the “full English breakfast with a pint of lager while watching re-runs of Only Fools and Horses in a sports bar” kinda deal.

A “live entertainment with karaoke and bingo seshes thrown in for good measure” sort of scenario.

Which could very easily be done in the UK.

If I was that absolute plonker who own Wetherspoons I’d be forming mergers and alliances with caravan parks left, right and centre to make a lot of our citizens’ vacation dreams come true.

Beer, fried food and a lot of sunburned English speakers.

When it comes to the ideal Englishman’s holiday, there really won’t be any place more like home.