I’ve booked a holiday to Portugal – along with the rest of the country

With a holiday booked to Portugal a few days before it made the green list, and cheap flights in the bag, Charlotte Cripps signs Lola up for swimming lessons in preparation for sun, sea and swimming pools

(Amara May)

I don’t care about 10-hour airport delays, Covid tests and cancellations. I just want to go away.

Horrendous queues while border force officers check Covid paperwork versus staying in the flat all summer with the dog is a no-brainer.

So I’ve booked a holiday to Portugal, like the rest of the UK. But now I’m obsessed with teaching Lola, five, to swim – so I’m not on edge all holiday. But I realise it’s got out of hand when I find myself asking the manager of my local mini Waitrose food store if it’s handy for a child to have two swimming costumes on holiday?

As if he would have a clue. I’m picking up a click and collect and this is not his area of expertise. As I’m holding up two unicorn swimsuits trying to make a decision on whether to keep them both, I notice his shell-shocked expression.

The fear of my children not being able to swim is consuming me. We’ve been urged to prioritise swimming lessons since Swim England announced that more than 5 million swimming sessions were lost during the pandemic. I’m not one to wait around and booked Lola into swimming classes as soon as they reopened. The fact the teachers aren’t allowed in the pool to teach them to swim makes the whole process slow and laborious as frustrated mums on the side scream: “Kick your legs!”

The only interaction Lola has is the swim coach holding her up by some plastic tubing called “a noodle” and pulling her along for about two minutes. Otherwise, she just jumps up and down in the shallow end. I march over to ask if she will do any swimming but they tell me: “Relax, it’s her first lesson.”

I have a phobia of public swimming pools because of verrucas, used plasters and foaming soap all over the floor from all the two-in-one shampoos. By some lucky stroke of fate, they have changed the time of the class the next week and I can’t make it. A mum friend will gladly suffer the experience for me until I can afford private swimming lessons in an elite health club.

I knew Portugal was going to be a good bet for making it onto the green list – and wanted to bag cheap flights before they soared. Then I found a villa with a pool, which I also booked, but that night I couldn’t sleep. It's all very well looking at the beautiful photographs online of French doors opening onto the pool surrounded by bougainvillea. But how would I relax?

I’m not even there yet and I’m having awful visions of the kids falling into the pool. What if I asked my 88-year-old dad to watch them while I had a 20-minute lie down? That sets my mind off again. Will I actually have a break? He can’t run. He might fall asleep himself. Would I be banged up abroad? Our holiday would be a lock-in because we wouldn’t dare open the French doors unless we were in lifeguard mode. Then my mind flits to child abduction when I’m still awake at daybreak. What parent doesn’t think of Madeleine McCann when booking a holiday to the Algarve?

Would I end up in the pool all day suffering from physical exhaustion between making my dad G&Ts? Imagine heading to do the weekly food shop at the local supermarket with the kids and my dad in tow? It’s not worth thinking about it.

The kids falling asleep on the way home from the beach – lugging each one of them up the gravel drive I saw in the photos. The electric gate closing behind us – with me left to sort everything out alone – alone – alone. Everyone asking me things so I feel like I’m on an episode of Question Time.

By the morning I am hyperventilating. When my dad says to me – “Just cancel it and book Cornwall” – the relief is enormous. Chloe Maldives pointed out when I went over to her house that the dates I’d booked seemed odd. “Even my boys at private school don’t break up so early in July.” I realise, in my haste, I had actually booked the holiday for the 1 July when they don’t break up until 27 July. No wonder the prices were so cheap.

She was delousing her hair – and her son’s hair; something everybody tells me I have to look forward to – while waiting to have a doctor phone consultation when suddenly she re-read the email and it was a Zoom consult. “Oh my God look at my hair! This doctor is really attractive!” she says as she gets me to wash it off and comb it back, desperately trying to look her best.

Later, I’m back on the holiday merry-go-round when somebody suggests a hotel in the Algarve with an elevator to the beach. Good God! It's perfect for my dad who hasn’t walked more than 10ft since lockdown. It feels meant to be. No navigating beach car parks and sand dunes. There will be food on tap. Kids’ club – if it’s open.

With only two days until the traffic light system is announced, I hit the button. It’s only a £200 deposit and – jackpot – it’s put on the green list. I got a bargain. If it’s not all scuppered by the Indian variant or the Brazilian one – who knows – I might have a proper holiday.