Cabin Fever

This is a strange time to be writing anything on a blog dedicated to fucking about and travelling a few thousand miles, but then again, it’s just a strange time in general. Like everyone else in the UK, France, Italy and beyond, I’m currently “locked down”, and that certainly means no cheeky trips to Gdansk, Thessaloniki or the dizzy heights of Ungheni. In fact, I can’t even get back to Sheffield and retrieve half of my life right now.

Instead, I spent the first week of lock-down not leaving the house. I tried to dabble in uni work to busy myself, after all, I’d spent the previous week gathering up some footage so that one of my final pieces of work would have some actual multimedia in it. Alas, Premiere Pro is about as pleasurable as making love to a pineapple when it comes to preventing it from crashing, and multiple rage-quits have led me to step away from it for the moment.

You end up getting up past Midday because you have no reason to, the day becomes an unproductive blur, you have yourself a couple of glasses of wine just to make everything a little better, you wake up late the next day with a headache, and the circle self-fulfills. See, when I’m having a mental low, my best medicine is getting out the house and going somewhere. My most extreme example being last year, when I had a crisis trip to Czechia, and managed to get myself through the remainder of second year on the fuel of cheap Pilsner Urquell and trying to ignore the fact that my train had a hole in the floor.

This year was going to be Slovakia, but that crisis trip was promptly undone when Slovakia closed its borders last month and I started to work my way through refunding everything. It’s sad, but what else can I do, smuggle myself in? Although, I must call out Ryanair here, who are insistent that my flight from Prague to Manchester is ready to check-in and is definitely running even when Czechia has closed its borders, in a ruse to avoid refunding me. Take note during this time how companies are behaving: If they’re treating customers and staff fairly, stick with them. If, like Ryanair, they’re going on like cowboys, walk away.

So, what’s my advice in general for times like these? Well, for one, don’t be panicking and re-booking holidays, because who knows when all of this is going to be over. Get refunds or vouchers where you can instead, preferably the former as companies may well go up shit creek before we can start jetting off once more.

Also, don’t go out to meet up with people, unnecessarily use public transport, and all of that bullshit. All you’re going to do is make this longer and more challenging for all of us, the whole implications of spreading a virus aside. Take yourself on a walk, get enough fresh air, but don’t take the piss. In a similar way, don’t police what your neighbours are doing and give them grief if they take the dog on two walks in a single day. Maybe they’re having a rough one, maybe the dog is just going on like it’s done a bunch of crack. Obviously, if they’re running around licking strangers, then maybe get them to knock it off.

Equally, don’t be pressured by the sight of everyone else using their time “right”, or anything like that. This is the middle of a pandemic, and for people like me with iffy mental health, that means that you have your good days, your bad days, and your worse days. You do what works for you, whether that be catching up on some Netflix, planning the next trip where you can actually leave your neighbourhood, or just catching up on some sleep, because face it, you probably need it. I mean, all I’ve done today is review a couple of craft beers and now I’m sat here writing this. To be honest, I’m still pretty proud of that.

Once I can get out of the country? Who knows. I’m drawn towards the Baltics and the Balkans.

All I know is I’ll need a fucking holiday.