I started to write this post a couple of months ago and then ran out of steam as Covid started to take control – thankfully not to me but the country and wider world as a whole. I revisited the post again as next week we were supposed to be going on holiday and while that clearly isn’t now going to happen I thought it was still worth some reflection on what might constitute holidays for the rest of 2020 and possibly into 2021 too.
How quickly we went from “you’re going on holiday again?” to “looks like you won’t be going on holiday again this year”. The current situation with Coronavirus/COVID-19 means the world is now a very different place to what it was just a couple of months ago. In fact the situation is still changing week by week and day by day. Who knows what the rest of the year holds for us.
If I thought that having our freedom of movement wings clipped by Brexit was bad enough I should have waited until I’d tasted having our freedom of movement restricted to our house. Actually, for me, this is not so much of a change as it is for many others, including my wife. Working from home means that the working week still looks very much like it did before. The first ten weeks of the lockdown were also spent in the company of my son, his wife and our lovely granddaughter so there were some compensations to the situation.
Looking back now it seems that we were very lucky that we got one break in to Seville before the lockdown was upon us. Just a week or so later and we wouldn’t have been able to go. So I am grateful for that. My brother and his family were not so lucky seeing their dream holiday to Florida ripped up just days before they were due to fly.
But what does the rest of the year look like?
We were going to be going up to Edinburgh for the festival in August. Now the festival has been cancelled we are in the situation were we still have a hotel booked but can’t cancel it. When booking we had the choice with the hotel to pay a higher price for a cancellable room at which we scoffed saying “well, we’re definitely going”. Ha, more fool us!
It could be that the hotel will have reopened by then. Nicola must surely realise that Scotland needs the tourists but what else might be open? If the hotel is open and not the restaurants then what? I’m sure my insurance company will have a view on that and it won’t be favourable I’m sure!
Our “big” holiday this year was to have been New England in the Fall. By then one might envision things being perhaps back to some sort of normality but that’s crystal ball gazing right now. The issue is that the decision needs to be made shortly as so far only a deposit has been paid and the bulk will soon be due. We can’t risk laying out a chunk of money on the hope that things will be OK in September so we have already made the decision to lose the deposit and try again next year.
And, finally, there was to have been our trip to Centreparcs starting tomorrow. That has been put back 13 months to next July.
I should point out that I recognise that this is very much a “1st world problem” and we are very lucky to go on the holidays that we do. Helen and I have always been work to live kind of people rather than the other way round and always look forward to our breaks no matter where they are.
With this in mind we have decided to still take the week off next week and, draws a big breath, take a staycation.
This will be a novelty to both of us as I don’t think that we have ever done that before . We are not the sort of people to sit around on a beach reading a book. We are always active, exploring some corner of some city somewhere so filling the time could be interesting. Therefore, I have decided to continue as I would have done had we gone away and to blog from the holiday every day. It will certainly make an interesting comparison compared to what we normally do! Stay tuned…