Coronavirus holiday cancellation may have silver lining

I’m being forced to dream of a white Christmas … just like the one I have actually experienced.

That truth came home forcibly this week, with the arrival an e-mail from Virgin Atlantic, regretting to inform us that flight VS402, OR Tambo to London Heathrow, on 14 June 2020, has been cancelled. Surprise, surprise.

Now that they have cancelled the flight we should have taken for our two summer weeks in the UK in June and July, Virgin has kindly offered to rebook us – and no change fee or extra charge – for any similar flight up to the end of November.

After that, though, we’ll have to pay extra for any changes and those are liable to be quite substantial, given the fact that Virgin has gone down the financial toilet like the rest of the world’s airlines, because of coronavirus.

Then we also got a sweet note from the woman whose Airbnb accommodation just outside Hampstead which we had booked for three nights. She wanted to know what our plans are.

We hadn’t thought much about it. When this whole crisis started blowing up in March, we thought things would be well back to normal by June. Not too accurate, was that? So we continued to hope … although that diminished daily.

Snowdonia, Wales. Picture: iStock

So, perhaps now we can look six or seven months down the line and start replanning that holiday for December. It’s the only time we can go, assuming that my wife (who is a school teacher) will be able to get off, which is not at all certain given the disruption already caused to the school.

I’ll probably have to take part of my time as unpaid leave, because the company has already forced us to use up our owed days and also unpaid time. Thank you again, coronavirus.

We had wanted to travel in June-July, which is summer in the UK, because the hills of Wales, where my daughter is living, are particularly beautiful in summer and we have never seen them at that time of the year.

In winter, Wales is a forbidding place, all patches of snow, bare trees and howling winds. Mind you, like all pubs in the UK, there are roaring fires going all day in pubs in Wales. Then again, at about R90 for a pint, it’s going to take a lot of slow sipping …

Another complication of travelling in the UK at the end of the year is driving. We will have to hire a car (the one we did for July has already been cancelled) because the public transport service doesn’t get you to the places you really want to go in the UK.

Taxi in London, England.  Picture: iStock

And, if there are snowstorms and blizzards, the Brits tend to fall apart when it comes to keeping the roads and motorways clear. For some reason, whenever there is a bad cold spell, they run out of the grit and salt which they need to put on roads to clear them of ice.

Driving on ice is frightening. There is no other way to describe it. Sliding backwards into a ditch while the car engine hits tops revs, spinning the wheels trying to go forward – been there, done that. Don’t especially want to do it again. So am not looking forward to that.

However, there are times when that picture postcard blanket of white is actually the reality. In Ireland, on Christmas Day, we went for a walk when the temperature was about -4°C. Without a breath of wind, it was the stillness which struck us, as if we were cocooned in cotton wool.

And, there is nothing quite like going to a midnight service on Christmas in an old stone church – as we once did – and going home to hot chocolate and companionship.

This coronavirus cloud might one day have that silver, albeit chilly, lining. We can only wait and see.

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