Shall we or shall we not go on holiday?

Shall we or shall we not go on holiday?

To go on holiday or not to go on holiday that is the question why? Whether it be nobler in the mind to suffer the pangs of sorrow if we decide not to go or do we simply go with our instincts and take a chance? These are the moral questions of the day and we have yet to resolve them. At the outbreak of the coronavirus lockdown we were rightly told that we couldn't go anywhere let alone the Iberian peninsula where the relentless heat of the Mediterranean would warm our souls and relax our minds if only for a week or two. But life is perfect so who cares.

Now we discover that a holiday to Spain may have dire consequences and it could be touch and go if you do decide to climb aboard a plane with your natty sombrero. For these are the warnings. Should you make up your minds to fly off to the Costa Brava, Blanca, Benidorm or Torremolinos you could be taking a calculated risk yet again. Beware the quarantine sentence when you troop bronzed and tanned through customs and the baggage carousel area. Yes quarantine. Sounds a bit harsh and draconian you might think but you've got to err on the side of caution.

So here we are four months into the partially lifted lockdown and still the conflicting messages buzz around our heads. It is rather like a complicated game of Pontoon where you have to shuffle the pack of cards and either twist or stick. You follow the news agenda and still there remains a sense of bafflement and indecipherable doublespeak. We may just as well be talking at cross purposes because the language is patently back to front and completely lacking in any kind of context.

Now the chances are that you've probably lost interest in any kind of holiday since we are now in July and the merry, merry months of May and jolly June passed long ago and the momentum of the year may well have gone. The fluid rhythms of the calendar year have been totally disrupted by the global pandemic and besides none of us really felt like doing anything or going anywhere when the lockdown reached its most disturbing level of severity and concern.

But within a month, holidays in Spain have dominated the news headlines even if most of us would probably be blissfully content with a bed and breakfast break in Scarborough. All of those hours spent in the baking heat of a Majorcan day seemed to have been and gone. And yet there are those of us who may think that the latter end of summer is the more appealing of options. The kids are off school on their summer holidays and what could be better than a long, cool soak in some far off swimming pool where the castanets click to their hearts content and the bullfighters still tease those poor animals.

Still, some of us have more or less thrown in the towel and surrendered to whatever the year may hold in store. Besides. this morning's news-driven photos of our undaunted Brits standing on Spanish beaches wearing those now essential masks remind you of that classic Carry on comedy film where Sid James and company giggle their heads off on a clearly amateurish set where a couple of buckets of sand have been hilariously spread across the floor to recreate a Spanish beach.

However there are those of us who can't quite get their heads around the topical reference to quarantine. Surely the very act of quarantining of anything or anybody should only be applied to cattle or the farming community when cows or sheep are confined due to illness. And yet here is the human race at its most susceptible and vulnerable, hundreds and thousands of lives dramatically taken because of a lethal virus and disease that perhaps should have been dealt with much sooner than it was.

Still, this is the way it has to be. For just a week or so Britain has been ordered to wear its surgical masks on its transport system and a nation still deeply worried about the immediate future stares uncomprehendingly at the wider world and wishes that we could wind the clock forward to a time when everything runs like clockwork rather than a rusty timepiece that refuses to work. Then we think about the possibility of going back to Spain, the country where it all started for huge swathes of Britain at the beginning of the 1970s, where evening meals bore no resemblance to anything you'd ever eaten at home and dessert consisted of some wobbly brown caramel that had just been slopped onto a plate.

This time though we have been told that even if we plump for the Costa Del Sol we have to conform to the rules and regulations of the modern age. This time a Spanish holiday comes with a number of important caveats. You won't have to worry about the excessive consumption of sangria and nobody has told you not to eat the perfectly edible paella. What should be exercising minds is the underlying fear that once you're back on Blighty soil again you've got to stay at home for another fortnight or so we're led to believe.

So it is that we shall book our late summer flights to the land of bullfighting toreadors with just a hint of nervous trepidation because this may not be our year for flying anywhere let alone Spain. You remember fondly a family holiday from many decades ago where you found yourself amusingly stuck in a lift in a Barcelona store, plunged into darkness as a result of a  power cut that seemed to last too long for your liking.

Now though is not the time for nostalgic excursions because we all need a holiday from time to time and whether it's Spain or Great Yarmouth in the pouring rain, the Brits have preferred to escape to warmer summertime territories. We've been lockdowned for far too long and what we'd give for a good, old fashioned donkey, a bottle of red from Seville and a stirring rendition of Y Viva Espana. Oh to be England in the summer.