A disease in a faraway country of which we know nothing

We are mostly going to be walking down a road which technically we can but we really ought not.  We are following the non-motorway way to Los Cristianos. We may stay a day before heading into the mountain. We are here to complete the Covid Story.

The trouble with memory, as Historians are beginning to find out, is that it is a trixy thing. The Gallipoli effect describes how veterans of that unholy invasion attempt gave different accounts after the film of the same name came out. The same can be spotted Post Saving Private Ryan. I knew of Covid, mostly by listening to ‘Science in Action.’  It appeared a bit like Bird Flu - something distant and abroad. It then spread to Italy but when you are engaged in the everyday and with a holiday planned, like most people, I wasn’t sure how it applied to me.

End of the holiday we arrived to find the airport in chaos. The sandstorm had closed down flights and we were stuck in the terminal. The relief when Jet2 told us to get on a bus and go to a hotel they had organised was a great relief.  Someone else was now in charge of getting us home.

That was Sunday night.  We arrived at midnight.  The lovely people in the hotel had put on a buffet.  We ate.  We went to rooms much nicer than the ones we had come from. We slept.

Monday could have been more relaxed.  Mostly it was the unknowing.  Jet2 suddenly had an uptake of followers on Twitter.  It was at that point that news broke that Covid had been reported in the next resort along.  Everyone in the hotel had been quarantined.  Masks appeared on some pedestrians.

At this point attempts to find out what to do hit the general sea of ‘Don’t know, probably something.’  Head Teachers were informed. Authorities contacted.  Stay at home if you don’t feel well was the general and vague advice.

We stayed another night. On Tuesday things were much the same.  A bit of wandering around, waiting for news. Tuesday afternoon we headed for the airport.  Eventually we got on a plane - hurrah!. The pilot informed us he only had enough flying hours left to get us to Spain.  To be honest fatalism had set in at that point.  Someone would get us home eventually, go with the flow.

We landed in Malaga - a place we knew having stayed in its environs three times.  An empty airport is an old place - half light fluorescent  and echoing huge spaces.  The coach took us west.  We recognised it.  We observed and pointed to the nice hotel we would rather have liked to have stayed in when we stayed in a modest apartment.  The coach stopped.  We got out and went into the said hotel.  Life wasn’t that bad.

We finally left Malaga on the penultimate flight of the day. At least we had known we were not being picked up till mid afternoon, so we could enjoy the pool and potter by the sea.  I was determined to buy something to prove we had touched down in Spain, so walked out with a Malga FC mug - bought in the airport.

The next two weeks were odd. We had got home about 5am and I went in to school.  For them, Covid was still a distant thing. We wandered round for two weeks with a sense we had seen the next episode and waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Tomorrow, the resort.