This year you may have noticed something distinctly absent from these pages. If you can call digital output ‘pages’. Have you noticed? What’s missing??? Probably not Lila or Joey, they’re still featured. Political intrigue is still… intriguing, football is still football, ok, there’s been a few less reviews of new movies and super restaurants (ok, super kebab shops, whatever) but that’s understandable in the circumstances. What’s missing is beaches. Tropical photos, exotic locations, bizarre creatures (I refer to, kind’a, animals here, rather than, say, Germans), exciting expeditions, underwater adventures, boat rides on magical lakes, cityscapes that leave you breathless, and overseas clubs where men can dress as llamas. Without fear of prosecution or being eaten.

Hi, my name is Andy and I haven’t taken a holiday since December 2019.

“Hello Andy!!!”

I’ve come to Holidays Anonymous to try and get some help, some empathy, some understanding from fellow holiday addicts to work out how to recover. I have a ‘seven step plan’ but every time I see a plane (which is not very often, currently) I have a burning desire to rush to Heathrow and stand in as many long queues as I can find. I haven’t ‘checked in’ for 9 fucking months!!! I miss the security scanner with a passion that burns my very soul. I yearn to stand in a snake line for 74 minutes for passport control. And when I go into certain shops I take my shoes off and put them on the counter. I’m a mess!

We love a holiday. And all we’ve done this year is cancel them. Or have them cancelled. Grand Canaria went in May, we’re supposed to be in Greece at this very moment, on a special ‘child friendly’ resort with the whole fam. And I suppose we might not make it to Kerala at Christmas. Mel insisted we cancel even though I actually really want to extend ‘the full Indian experience’. I want to take it from the usual ‘2 weeks of eating curry 3 times every dayyyyyyy!!!!!’, to joining the second most populous nation on the planet on its quest to out-Covid every other nation on Earth. I want to risk getting the virus there, going to hospital there, and sharing the Indian way of ‘social distancing’ which is to cram 52,000 people into McDonalds. And then I not only want to quarantine for 2 weeks, I want to do it for THREE!

Can you buy masks with Air Miles?

Happy Holi-Days

A xxxx