Colm O'Regan: 'There is talk of being able to go to hotels soon. I won’t let myself hope'
Roger Kenny Photography Actor Head Shots www.rogerkenny.ie
They’re at it again. Flying kites. But this time they’re flying kites about the summer. After a year of warnings about bad things, now there are hints about the good things.
The vaccination prodding is still there though. To see if they get an adverse reaction. Last week they jabbed us with a hint that the under-30s might get it before the 30-50s. People got het up. Not me. As someone who works in a 'creative' industry, my whole life consists of accepting that someone younger and less deserving will get a break I wanted. So I’m totally zen about when I get the one-two.
In fact, I want to be the last person to get it. At least that’s notable. Like in a table quiz when you know you’re doing cat and you wonder, “maybe there’s a special prize for coming last?”. So you deliberately get everything wrong in the hope you win a bottle of Aldi prosecco meant for the raffle.
There is talk of being able to go to hotels soon. I won’t let myself hope. Until I’m checked in and a man in Hazmat has to come up to the room with an ironing board, a toasted sandwich, and a pint locked in a safe, will I really believe that we are on holiday.
At the risk of triggering pedants, staycations will be big again this year. The Irish being at home this summer on the beach with our Covid Stones for company is great for body positivity.
Irish towns could help people feel like they’re in a charming little European town? For example, they could close every shop for no reason to simulate the experience of a Thursday local bank holiday that you’ve forgotten about. They could have beautiful galleries but it’s four miles walk to the nearest place that resembles a Londis.
Hipsters will need to be accommodated. Robbed of the chance to find themselves, to go to an eco-village high in the Guatemalan highlands to commune with nature but keep the locals out, they will need to channel their need to find somewhere unspoiled.
This is a chance for Ireland’s Terrible Towns to really stake a claim for the staycation euro. Rough towns, strange towns, where there is a factory for offal, places you come away from thinking “Was it just me or was that just really weird there?” Towns where small shops shopping has been hollowed out by a Lidl at a roundabout and a petrol station at the motorway exit that does sushi. Now is the chance for those towns to say: “If you are in need of discovering something, we are not touristy. Come and stay in the local hotel with Grundig TVs chained to the ceiling and a room key attached to a brick. Round off the evening with a fight.”
Will hairdressing be combined with holidays to save time. We could all go together. The hairdresser asking you “Are you anywhere nice on your holidays?”
Will people book a precautionary staycation? A sustainable literary-based slow holiday in a willow yurt, but keeping one ear out for a change in regulations. If foreign travel opens up, they just leave the sphagnum moss breakfast, drive straight to a Monarch Flight to Santa Ponsa, drink their own weight in San Miguel in the airport because it’s only three euro a bushel and spend two weeks singing Ole Ole in Paddy’s Fierce Irish Pub.
The possibilities are endless. Until the next kite is flown.
