Floods, holidays and waiting for the next lockdown

Despite everyone going on holidays again, Trudy Tyler is quite happy staying at home, thank you very much. Even the storms have acted as an excuse to stay in. By Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

My south London street is always quiet at this time of year with the schools on holiday, but this year it is eerily so. Everyone who can get out of the city has made a bolt for the countryside, or even another country if they’re especially brave and can afford the possibility of an unexpected spell in hotel quarantine. A friend posted a picture of St Ives on her Insta account. It was busier than Oxford Circus two shopping days before Christmas in “the Olden Days”. If you want peace and tranquillity and the possibility of getting hold of a pasty without having to join a three-hour-long queue, I’d say that this summer Oxford Street is probably the place to be.

My friend Kelly, a single mum who lives in North Devon, should be feeling especially pleased with her life choices right now but she says that she and her son Joe are effectively under house arrest until September. The south west has been heaving with visitors since travel restrictions were lifted. Kelly lives ten minutes’ drive from some of the United Kingdom’s most beautiful beaches, but to get to those beaches requires rising long before dawn to guarantee a parking spot, knowing that when she and her son get back from having a paddle, she may find she is unable to park outside her own house.

“And don’t even get me started on how expensive everything is.”