A decent pint

Here’s another minor annoyance about the Mac: At the top right hand of the screen it does tell me the day and time, but, unlike the Toshiba (and every other PC I’ve ever had) it does not tell you the date. So I just had to get up and look at the calendar. Oops. No longer April. Change the page. It’s May 4^th today, which means there are nine days to go in my current write-something-every-day-for-six-weeks challenge. The home stretch, I guess.

It’s getting harder and harder to think of anything to say in the morning. Perhaps it’s down to the combination of the pandemic and the weather. Let’s face it, it’s not as if I am doing much of anything at the moment, so there’s fuck all to report.

Anyway…

An email this morning from British Airways, informing me: “You’re currently due to travel to London on 14 July 2020, however due to the fast changing situation, we wanted to let you know that if you’d like to change the date or destination of your trip and you booked directly with British Airways – you can apply for a voucher online. This can be redeemed against future travel, for flights taken up until 30 April 2022.”

I should have seen this coming.

I decided back in March that I wasn’t going to cancel my booking, because if I cancelled I would only get a 75% refund, whereas, if I waited until BA cancelled the flight, I’d get 100%. What was I thinking? With thousands (tens of thousands?) of people cancelling bookings every day, they were never going to cough up for refunds. So, a travel voucher good for two years, not money back in my bank account.

When am I likely to be willing to sit on a plane for nine hours, breathing in what everyone else is breathing out? Probably not until I have been vaccinated. And when will that be? Certainly not this year. Next year? Perhaps.

Brief pause while I do a Google search to check on the temperature of the anti-vaxxers these days. Apparently some are wavering, but others, like Novak Djokovic, who says he’d rather quit tennis than be vaccinated, are doubling down. Well, I can’t imagine him flying in coach, so I’m not likely to be seated beside him.

There is one deal breaker. I am absolutely not going to the UK until I can be sure the pubs are open and will stay open. How long will that take? I can see them reopening sometime this summer. Imagine what it will be like. Actually, you don’t have to, because my clever clogs mate Ray, who swore he would be my go to guy if I took his advice and bought a Mac (and where is he now – fucking pandemic), spliced our local into this.

But what happens when Covid-19 sweeps back in come November, which it’s a safe bet (as sure as God didn’t make little green apples and it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime) it will? How long will it be before I can rebook a flight secure in the knowledge that the day I arrive I can go to the Dog and Bell and have my first decent pints of bitter since my last visit to London? Tell me that. Oh, that’s right – you can’t because no one has any fucking idea.

Oh, look, I’ve actually managed to write past my fifteen minute minimum. Phew. Let’s hope I can come up with something tomorrow.