There’s a scene from the penultimate series of Mad Men, as good a lockdown rewatch as any, when Don is just back from Hawaii with his pain-in-the-hoop new wife Megan. Alone in his office there is a beautifully framed shot of him looking through the blinds out at the city but to the sounds of the Pacific island waves. Same. Only I’m wearing yesterday’s tracksuit while day-dreaming about going anywhere. I even have props. I’ve never spent that much on luggage but in October I ordered a Vocier leather set, just to spite the year that was in it. It sits pristine beside my desk and works like a S.A.D. light, subliminally releasing a familiar serotonin and cortisol shandy that prods me into flight or flight mode. That I have to leave soon, when I don’t. But this month for the first time in a year I can at least plan. And plan with no more of my days being semi-determined by an unholy marriage of a bad orange man and a little blue bird. A black preacher from MLK’s church and a young Jewish guy beat two inside traders who campaigned hand and sheet with white supremacists to give a nice old man complete control of the US government. Not the second coming, not the anti-Christ, just a nice old empathetic man. Nowadays feels like a world war in some ways and America is, as always, joining late and will, as always, help finish it quickly. Empathy won. Science won. This world war won’t end with the enemy shooting itself in the head or signing an armistice, and the alien mothership won’t fall from the sky to cheers. The spikey little Death Star will just get smaller and smaller, and its end will be steady but bitty. We will be masked for the rest of this year at least. Vaccine certs, apps, bracelets and bubbles will be the main factors in where and when you can go places. There will be zero-Covid flights, hotels and resorts.
“2021 will have its own travel equation – flying time by the number of flights divided by how busy and calm the plane is.”
The awful term vaxication is already in play, there’ll be them and us tiers to travel although I do love the thought that Europe’s beaches might be overrun in summer with the over-seventies, those at risk and frontline workers partying together. I’d fly tomorrow. I trust airlines, HAP filters, empty airplanes and airports more than I do a trip to a Dublin supermarket. I trust hotels more than homes but 2021 will have its own travel equation – flying time by the number of flights divided by how busy and calm the plane is. The biggest challenge to this in the short term is booze. Drinks trolleys – at home, in the office or on a plane – have always been comforting things. From hungover Heinekens on first holidays to my drinks getting smaller and stronger as I get older, they are tradition. As are preflight pints or bubbles. That’s the problem. When you’re drinking on the flight you don’t have to wear a mask, so the more you stay drinking the longer the mask can stay off. Seems stupid. In 2019 one plastered person could change the plane’s mood to Hurt Locker in a minute. That was before our personal space had real borders and our bubbles had hard edges. In 2021, hammered lads on their holliers cannot be on planes like they were last summer. Airlines need to do something extreme – breathalyse everyone at the gate and have a two-drink max on the flight. Whatever but do it now. In the meantime, I plan on waking up in Paris. Ironing a shirt in somewhere spectacular – the new Cheval Blanc would be as good a place as any – while I try to time my Ten Belles croissants and coffee so I am still ravenous for my as-soon-as-you’re-open booking in a very grand dining room for an as-long-as-possible grander lunch. It’s a long shot but I want to get back to the late summer streets and the High Line of New York. To drink cocktails on curbside tables.
To read local fiction poolside in the Equinox. See the new Penn Station before going back to the Oyster Bar at the old Grand Central to talk about it. Then on to Bryce Canyon or somewhere else silent and true west before flying directly to Cuba, because that nice old man and his new management will allow that sort of thing. If I can’t get back stateside then alfresco in Bologna please, with its socially distant tall tables and endless mortadella on warm nights in that orange city, while the students are gone and before the tourists come back. Any of them, or any number of other places in Europe where I don’t speak the local language well enough will do so I can have a holiday from numbers. For now, I’ll settle for daydreaming about a pint and toastie in my local. Or a night in any good hotel or restaurant on this island. Magical places where beds are made for you and food and drinks are brought to you. The good people that make those beds, carry our bags, load the dishwasher, clean the bathrooms, pour our wine and cook our food, they can’t work from home but have been sent home and they are mostly what I think about when I am staring out that window. Mostly.
