Well, here we are, busily arguing about the speed of relaxing the lockdown. Tourist attractions all over the place are in a quandary: they want the tourist income but they don’t want the overcrowding and the risk that goes with it. Mostly they are saying they would rather wait a bit longer. Mr. Johnson wants us to be back to normality by July. Does this include tourism? Does this include Britons travelling out of the country? We shall see.
Meanwhile other countries are also thinking about it.
In an attempt to gradually reopen tourist venues, PM Edouard Philippe said France’s residents would be allowed to go on holiday from July, but only within the country. That’s probably not too much of a hardship as in France there is a long tradition of the majority spending holidays in France.
In fact, for a long time the Germans and the British have been the greatest travellers for holiday purposes. It’s been changing in recent years but really you just need to look at how Mallorca, for example, caters so well for those two nationalities.
Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has said several times that Italians will be going on holiday this summer. Yesterday, the government approved a decree which will allow travel to and from abroad from June 3. Free travel within the country’s borders will also be permitted from the same day. An Italian friend of mine is spitting feathers as she feels that opening her country to foreign travellers too soon is a dangerous mistake. And this is despite her own real longing to get back to her beloved Sicily for the summer!
Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, warned at the end of April that the country would re-open to tourists only “when it’s in a position to guarantee tourists’ safety”.
Everyone arriving in Spain from abroad since 15 May must undertake a two-week quarantine, with new arrivals allowed out only to buy food or medicine, seek medical attention, or on emergency grounds. The quarantine will remain in force while the state of emergency, declared on 14 March, endures – possibly until the end of June. So we’ll see what goes on there. We have a personal interest here as we really need to sort out our Vigo flat. Mind you, even if Spain were to let us in, would the UK government allow us to travel, especially those of us in the 70+ age group? Besides as we usually fly Liverpool to Porto, will there be buses from Porto to Vigo? Watch this space! It’s all we can do.
One country is ahead of the rest in plans to get its tourist industry up and running. Greece has emerged with one of the lowest infection rates and death tolls in Europe after enforcing radical lockdown measures early on. “If things go according to plan, we’ll be open by 1 July,” prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last week. “Europe’s tourism pie is going to be much smaller, but this summer we want a bigger part of it.”
Meanwhile, the search for a vaccine goes on. Llamas appear in one of the the latest ideas. Apparently llama antibodies have been used in combatting Sars and so might be useful in the current situation. I suppose nothing should be ruled out, within reason that is. Witchcraft and exorcism are both a step too far!
We still hear a good deal about how all the isolation is bad for the nations’s mental health. Here is a writer putting the opposite point of view. And it may well be that there are people suffering from lack of solitude. Not everyone has the space to go and be by themselves for a while. In most middle-class families each child has his or her own bedroom which they can retreat to for a bit of “me-time”. But that’s not the case for everyone. I know what it’s like to share a bedroom with two sisters. You don’t have a space of your own. We used to wait until our brother went off to camp with the Boy Scouts and then take it in turns to have his bedroom. Maybe that’s why I have always appreciated a bit of solitude from time to time. It’s a funny mixed up world.
Now, here is something randomly different. In an article about appreciating the cinema, where famous people reminisced about their early experiences, I found this:-
“A spear flung from the back of the crowd stays dangling on the screen.
Tilda Swinton
1980.
A sheet hung on a tree in the middle of a village in Kitui County, Kenya, a cranky old western screened via an even crankier old projector and its generator, which was all driven round by two geezers from Nairobi in a loop from Somalia to Tanzania and up and over again every two years or so. An audience of hundreds, gathered from a distance of many miles. In the middle of the shoot-out in the saloon, a spear flung from the back of the crowd hits the baddie in the chest and stays dangling in the heart of the sheet right up to the final romantic clinch. Unforgettable. Magic cinema of dreams, you rock us everywhere and always – ad astra and back, ad infinitum and beyond.
Respect.”
Those were the days!
The weather is a bit dull today. Maybe it will put people off flocking to the beach and National Trust places. We are certainly not going far. I ran along the Donkey Line bridle path earlier, when the sun was actually shining. And Phil and I will probably go for a walk later, but that’s it.
On the menu today is a chicken dish with a Moroccan tagine sauce. Maybe a glass of red wine. Our daughter came to beg a bottle of red wine from us yesterday. She has bottles of white wine and prosecco, given to her as presents from time to time, which is ironic as she almost teetotal. Her partner wanted to cook a dish which required a generous splash of red wine. So she asked if we had a suitable bottle, not especially good, a cooking wine. Then followed a discussion as I explained that if you cook with wine you have use decent stuff. There really is no such thing as “cooking wine”. Not for culinary snobs anyway. She laughed as that was exactly what her partner had said to her. So she came a collected a bottle, which gave is a chance for her and the children to stand in the garden and chat - just a little bonus!
Life goes on! Stay safe and well, everyone!
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