Booked it, Packed it, Fucked Off: A 120 Page Travel Journal

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The tour operator Jet2holidays and the Jet2 carrier said summer bookings had leapt 600% since Monday afternoon, compared with this time last week, to mainland Spain and its islands, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. In the flush of post booking excitement I went crazy and bought some new shorts. Madness. as I have several perfectly acceptable pairs that I have only had for 20 years. Appreciating the absolute carnage that is probably ongoing now in the rush for UK tourists to book stuff, I feel quite smug that we have pretty much everything in the bag for prices we can tolerate.

Once that had sunk in after a few seconds, my stomach churned and those special words escaped my lips. “You couldn’t (expletive) write it”. If you haven’t already got one booked, now’s the time to start thinking about your summer holiday! It’s only a few short months until the school summer holidays, so if you have a family don’t It’s done. We are booked for an overseas holiday and surely with just two weeks to go, not even the raging incompetence of our government can scupper those plans now? I mean, according to their latest “dead cat” nonsense leak to the press, I may have to convert my GBP to Pounds, Shillings and Pence before then paying for some Euros if they have their way, but by hook or by crook (and they are all that) we should be on that plane. I have no idea what is going on there, as I am not a DVC expert. I am hoping over time things settle down and something does come up that we can use. I am as we speak in “talks” with the folks I have my credit notes with to try and source something suitable. The Thomas Cook chief executive, Alan French, said: “The government’s announcement is good news for those of us desperate to get away on holiday. While we await more details, it’s clear that the government’s ambition is to open up international travel in the coming months and hopefully in time for the summer holidays.”

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Thankfully, the box office were able to reprint them and we got in, but it did feel like we had forgotten how to operate in these matters. This does not auger well for the logistical exercise of getting to a different country with everything we need. Here is a collection of funnies from this top British comedian, Mr Peter Kay. Below that you can also take a peep at a video of him in action. Johan Lundgren, the easyJet chief executive, said: “We have consistently seen that there is pent-up demand for travel and this surge in bookings shows the signal from the government that it plans to reopen travel has been what UK consumers have been waiting for.”

It’s funny what seeing one overfilled boot of a car can do to you. Muttering to the Husband that it was a good job we weren’t flying off anywhere because what we do with ALL THAT STUFF?! A short drive and unload to our holiday home 30 minutes later, with further mutterings from the husband on whether we actual needed ALL THAT STUFF, an afternoon of exploring we got the kids to bed, popped the Prosecco, lit the log fire and settled down to play scrabble and chat. My winning scrabble board Are you there for Presidents Day? We have been and just avoided MK for the weekend (we went to AK and shopping/Outlets instead).With the changes announced late last week, that test before flying home is now not required and we just need to do the one within two days of arriving home. At least now the risk of being stranded overseas due to a positive test is removed, although of course we would not travel with COVID should we actually have it! Andrew Flintham, the managing director of Tui UK and Ireland, said: “The announcement from the prime minister was positive and shows that by working with the travel industry on a risk-based framework our customers will have the opportunity to travel abroad this summer. We will continue to work closely with the government so people can look forward to a well-deserved break away, after what has been a very difficult year for many.” Holidays that were my normal, that didn’t involve a plane, or an airport. Sometimes a big fancy train but more often than not a big boat. The ferry to France. On choppy seas. Spiriting us away from the rain of England and depositing us in the rain in France. Which was better rain. Less rain-y rain. Holiday rain so it was all OK. Oh, and there used to be a lot of Brazilian schools there – especially in MK and DHS, as it was one of their annual holiday trips in January.)

Having moved our Florida trip four or five times (I have honestly lost count) when the last cancellation happened I did jettison my toys from the stroller a little and instead of moving it, I cancelled everything. Breaking the habit of a couple of decades, off I went and booked a holiday to another country, crucially nowhere near the US. What could go wrong? It won’t surprise anyone reading this to learn that I have a well developed persecution complex. Most weeks, despite living a largely untroubled and privileged life, I can find something to moan about. I often trot out the phrases “you couldn’t write it” or “you couldn’t make it up” to bemoan whatever the latest minor upset might be. However, after what has been a troubled couple of years holiday wise, the events of the last week or so really have been comedic.This would not be our ideal time of year of course. Temperatures will be much lower than we prefer but at this point that does not matter. Again, for reasons I will not trouble you with, if we were not to take this chance, it would be very unlikely we could fit a trip in during 2022 and having not been since mid 2019 this would be very upsetting indeed, indeed probably totally unacceptable.