Corona Diaries: escape strategies

Time to think about getting away. Not actually getting away, just thinking about it. And working out how we can make our first trip after lockdown suitably zeitgeist-compliant.

Over the summer, we usually go on a city break or two. Krakow and Palermo were candidates for this year. Then a gloriously quiet ten days in a very basic gite in a Volvo-lite corner of Southern France: Lot-et-Garonne, as the last of the strawberries are being picked and the evening farmer’s markets in the local bastides are drawing to a close.

Our big breaks tend to be in the winter months, when the delights of Beaujolais Day, Halloween and Guy Fawkes night are far outshone by the lush humidity, the street food and the verdant rice paddies of South East Asia.

We have plans for some long-haul travel, but whether that happens remains to be seen. Eleven hour flights in masks, punctuated by sterile airports manned by people who are keen to out you as a coronadevil at the first opportunity are not an enticing prospect, even if the hosts at your final destination are as charming as ever.

So we’ll see. If we won the lottery, an executive jet would be a far more attractive prospect, if somewhat ecologically incorrect.

But what of local travel, by which I mean within our grand old continent of Europe? It would be wonderful to do a little farewell tour of favourite continental cities before we are reduced to the status of “third party” and have to join the same line at passport control as visitors from North Korea, Burundi and Uzbekistan.

But then when we return to the UK, we’ll have to join the Koreans, Burundians and Uzbeks in two weeks quarantine. That wouldn’t be a big problem for us since we only live twenty minutes away from Heathrow. But if we’re not allowed out in those two weeks, it would be a little unfair to rely on relatives for our supplies of milk, quinoa and caviar until either we died of the virus or emerged unscathed. Occado is not to be relied upon, darlings.

So a staycation within these shores, perhaps, or maybe just a few day trips to West Wittering or other beaches, where social distancing doesn’t seem to apply, and diseased zombies lurch past you sweating out the virus along with their excess sun cream.

Cornwall would be nice, except that the locals can’t decide whether they want you or they don’t. So would we be greeted with pitchforks and cattle prods, or welcomed to a glorious clotted cream tea while hanging over a cliff edge to conform with social distancing regulations?

Perhaps we should go for lesser-known places. In an earlier piece I mused whether the glowing sands of beaches near nuclear power stations might not be places where one could put a reasonable distance between us and the rest of humanity.

A little extreme perhaps, but there are other places no further than Cornwall worth considering if you live in the South of England. Obscure parts of Norfolk or Wales, for example, which have the added benefit of being unlikely to boast statues of slave traders. Or perhaps Northumberland, which might be a bit cold but has some impressive wild and windswept places. Surely they need our money as much as the Cornish?

Scotland would be good too, but I don’t like midges, and anyway Scotland has a bad reputation as the engine room of empire. As well as the home of Tennant’s Lager, which fuels the barbarian hordes south of the border.

Most likely we shall wait until the French decide that we Brits are no longer unclean. We might then venture forth to Lot et Garonne. But not, as usual, via one of Mr Ryan’s sardine specials out of Stansted, packed as they are with poshies in face masks and panama hats putting up with the Common Man spilling over alarmingly from the next seat.

No, if we go, it will be by car, in which we can only infect each other, even though a twelve-hour drive will necessitate a few risky encounters at service stations. But that’s what hand gell’s for, isn’t it?

Once there, we can sit in solitude, gazing out across the fields, orchards and woodland, dreaming of truffles, cepes and snails. We can dine outside, on poulet, tranches de porc and wicked cheeses, safe in the knowledge that our antibacterial wet wipes will take care of any RNA lurking on the local produce. And for dessert, we can pick the peaches, apples and pears from nearby trees. If we’re lucky, our neighbour might bring over a melon or some tomatoes from his garden.

Peace and quiet in the crackling heat, with only the lizards and hornets for company. What better way to spend a couple of weeks away from incompetent politicians explaining away their latest failures, statue wars and the ominous signs of a second wave?

Otherwise we’ll just stay in our garden, where the birds compete for our attention with the array of strimmers, leaf-blowers and patio cleaners deployed by our neighbours, which bring to mind Soviet tank exercises in Western Ukraine back in the good old days.

Not that I’m complaining, mind. There are far worse places to be.