Holidays! Set times for holidays! Things that might spread the virus again.

News reports tell us that the transport secretary will cut short his holiday in Spain and return to the UK after being caught out by the return of coronavirus quarantine measures for the country. Quite what he will do about it when he gets back is a bit of a mystery to me. Surely he could have finished off his holiday and the returned home. As Parliament is on summer holiday he wouldn’t have to worry about his employer penalising him for not turning up because he was in quarantine.

I have often wondered about Parliament taking a summer holiday, as if nothing of importance could happen during the summer months. Does it perhaps date back to the days when MPs were mostly landowners? They would have wanted to go back to their estates to oversee the harvest. As far as I know they have never got the stick that teachers always have for having a six week break in the summer months. But it seems like an odd anomaly in an age when firms no longer have set company holidays.

I remember the first school I worked at having the Oldham Wakes Holiday in the last two weeks of June. This dated back to a time when most people worked in the textile mills which closed for two weeks in summer for the machinery to be cleaned and serviced. So Oldham took its holidays at one time, Rochdale at a slightly different time and Bury, for example, at yet another. And seaside places like Blackpool catered accordingly! But we no longer have a set holiday period. Hence the kerfuffle there has sometimes been about people taking their children on holiday during term time. Other countries like France and Spain still have that moment when everyone sets off on holiday. Paris goes quiet and traffic reports talk about “le grand départ”.

According to Giles Tremlett writing about Spain’s coronavirus spike this holiday period will perhaps just make things worse. Catalonia and Aragón, and possibly Madrid, are seeing more cases. “Yet now”, writes Giles Tremlett, “Spain is entering a holiday period when people will scatter from cities and mix at beach resorts before returning home late in August. There is potential, in other words, for things to get worse.” Because that is what they do, leave the cities for a second hime by the sea or in a country place. My sister in Andalucía sees a summer influx of people from Madrid and Seville. And a young friend of mine has recently been with his partner to spend time close to Samil beach in Vigo where his partner’s family have a house. 

Giles Tremlett also highlights another problem in Spain:- “Meanwhile the migrant workers who pick Spanish fruit and vegetables live in sometimes crowded, shabby and abusive conditions, which have long gone ignored. Those conditions are a perfect Covid-19 breeding ground. Since many labourers are young and fit, they are often asymptomatic ; they follow the harvests from soft fruits in Aragon and Catalonia, to citrics in Valencia and olives in Andalucía. Itinerant workforces are key to Spain’s rural economy. Yet nobody saw it coming.”

And so the virus could be spread around again! Maybe we are right to be quarantining travellers.

The radio programme “Call you and yours” is just now advising those who MUST have a holiday to go for a package holiday because if quarantine measures suddenly mess up your holiday it is more protected than an independently organised trip. One chap on the radio, just back from Spain, talks about having advised young people he spoke to there to enjoy their holiday and worry about the problem as the return date approaches, rather than rush home one or two days after getting there.

As for us, here we are, still in Saddleworth, seeing a limited number of people, not even rushing to the pub or the restaurant.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!