Catch flights, not the virus
14/08/20
The day before my trip to Burgundy, Boris kindly announced that any UK nationals returning to Britain from France will be expected to self-isolate for 14 days. With an 8am flight booked to Paris and the rule coming into effect after 4am, I was particularly irritated to be presented with another corona virus conundrum. Had I flown 12 hours earlier I would not be facing a moral dilemma and I did not want to change my plans. With 36 hours until my flight was due to take off, I scrutinised headlines and trawled the internet, trying to confirm if France really was going to retaliate by imposing a 14 day quarantine period on any UK arrivals after the same date. Neither the french ministry’s website nor the twitter accounts of its government officials offered a conclusive answer. I clung onto the vague connotations of words like “could” and phrases like “possible reciprocity” as a way to justify my race to cross the border before any real laws were enforced. My brain went in overdrive as I asked myself how I could go ahead with my holiday and also slither out of self-isolating.
15/08/20
At 1am, a few hours before my alarm was going to wake me for my journey to the airport, I decided to check my emails since I couldn’t focus on sleeping. There it was, an email from EasyJet not cancelling my flight but telling me that flight amendments were *FREE* until Sunday 16th. I explored the site’s flight alternatives once more. Before I could stop my impulsive fingers from tapping ‘pay now’ I had spent £1.95 changing my homeward flight from the 21st to the 27th. And instead of Paris to London I was flying Geneva to Palermo. Whoops. At 5:45am somewhere in the tired hugs I gave mum and dad my new plan slipped out. That woke them up. I could hear the panic rising in their voices as they tried to reason with their mad, restless, defiant daughter. They were worried I was making a stupid decision heading into the belly of the beast, the city whose rate of infection seemed to be spiking and they were offended that my week long trip could well turn into ditching them for 4. Dad begrudgingly drove me to Clapham junction in the morning mist and waved me off. See you in a month then?! Or back here by lunch if you’re flight is cancelled or if you change your mind! I knew his last sentence was overly hopeful. A pang of guilt filled my stomach as I headed for the train to Gatwick.
It only took 20 minutes after my departure from Wandsworth for me to receive an onslaught of parental texts dissuading me from my travels, telling me this was a very bad idea. My favourite one was mum’s screenshot of a headline from The Thurrock Gazette saying “travellers will have to quarantine for 14 days after arrival in France.” Not only was this the exact repetition of the speculation we were reading at lunch the day before, but it was also the same as yesterday’s headlines announced by actual mainstream media outlets. When thinking about a career in journalism, someone once advised me to avoid any paper with ‘gazette’ in its name, as such a news source was not to be taken seriously. In spite of scoffing into my face mask, the fear did still linger. What if I was making a terrible mistake? What if border control sent me home? What if I catch corona virus and give it to Grace and her family? I mentally swatted away all of these thoughts with one question: yeah but what’s the worst that could happen? No combination of cold feet or scaremongering headlines from all the newspapers, journals and gazettes under the sun were going to stop me from leaving the UK and exercising my freedom to its maximum capacity.
I’ve settled in seat 28F after moving twice in order to have a row to myself. It baffles me that EasyJet would allocate seats to 3 people in a row instead of trying to keep customers safely distanced bearing in mind the flights are all half empty. The pilot has asked cabin crew to prepare for landing. But I felt that announcement was a direct order, telling me to emotionally, mentally and physically prepare. I’ve got an RER to Les Halles, a metro to Bercy and a 12 minute walk between me and a car ride to Burgundy. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to get in and out of Paris this quickly in my life but I’ve definitely got enough sanitiser and hopefully enough sanity to make it.