As we rested in a mountain bar near our rented home in Marbella, the laughter was gone. Not forever hopefully, but long enough to make you think.
What is happening to us? It’s almost Christmas again and the world below us is lit up like a tree. The Mediterranean looks like snow in the moon-light and Africa glimmers in the distance.
And the world is closing down again before eyes.
The barman shines glasses and slides them onto the overhead shelves, the new travel restrictions on Brits who bought abroad – restrictions affecting getting back in to Britain from Europe in particular – will cost him dearly. Christmas has always been a bonus to him but he knows that fewer families are going to head for their places in the sun now.
“It could cost me thousands,” he sighed. But more poignantly he said: “But it’s not the money so much, we’ve had this bar for two decades and so many of these people who come out to their holiday homes throughout the year are our friends. Good friends, we have a laugh and a drink and celebrate together. That’s gone again.”
It was 7-ish and the couple next to us at the bar were already on the their second bottle of Rioja. But it wasn’t making them happy.
The wife, in her 60s, dripped gold and a hangdog expression as she said: “We bought our villa because it’s in one of the best white villages in the province and we use it as an investment. We’ve another place just down the road where we stay when its rented out on Booking.com or Airbnb.
“People are cancelling their bookings already… we’ve got five bedrooms at the renter and can get £2,000 a week at the right time. But it needs £28,000 a year to wipe its face. We’re okay financially or we wouldn’t be here. But we aren’t rich and things like this make us feel anxious.”
Other people are just going to be lonely for their families this Christmas. Again.
Many of these people here, in this beautifu; pretend ‘ancient fishing’ village on an Andalucian mountainside cheek-by-jowl by Putin’s Marbella holiday palace and Hugh Grants little hide-away villa are business people, they have been prime-movers, shakers and influencers.
But like the rest of us, they are starting to see that they are being controlled. Their personal determination to walk their own paths to autonomy and success has been thwarted by a little fatty bug called Covid and politicians across the world who are seeing something so many of us ordinary human beings have missed for two years now.
Mr Jones has lost control of his nice ordinary bank-balanced life by the sea and didn’t even notice.
Putin might like to live in his sunshine palace overlooking the hoi polloi with all the money in world (almost) oiling his proclivities and be surrounded by gunmen and trained killers keeping him in magnificent isolation. But did we, the ordinary ones, sign up for the poor man’s version of this?
No we didn’t!
And yet the powers, Buffoon Boris, Socialist-Sanchez, Mad-Macron, Fishy-Sturgeon, Murky Murkle and all the rest of the motley crew represent the power to control us more than ever before.
In Austria, the government has ‘imprisoned’ a third of its population as a danger to public health.
And all over the world, it’s the same story – abuse of power.
Freedom that was unquestionable. Our right as human beings.
The authorities around the world are forcing us back in to our boxes
We have vaccines and yet we are even being denied the freedom to get ill and die.
#marbella #spain #covid #airbnb #booking.com
Jon Sinnikal
As a work of satire, it’s very good.
It appears to speak from a position of some privilege. Not once does it speak of social responsibility for public health.
Jon Sinnikal Thanks for your comment Jon, yep I agree the responsibility for public health is paramount, but like any ‘remedy’ we need to look at the side-effects and the future we will be left with … there is no doubt our freedom is being eroded – rightly or wrongly – and we need to look at what we are actually going to get back … i think most people are acting in a sensible fashion and are determined to beat this bug … but what will it have cost us?
Leigh G Banks , I thank you Sir for reflecting these thoughts.
. Current society is riddled with fear and anxiety.
” Holidays ” have changed. Families are broken due to a worldwide deadly
virus as well as the political divide between sanity/ morality and the masses
who’s brains are stuffed with misinformation perpetrated by hate.
Restaurants , pubs, Live Music venues are in dire straits.
The new normal has yet to be defined from my perspective.
I am wondering if the concept of ” normal” will eventually fade away.
Germany has now ‘locked up’ in their houses all who haven’t had the vaccine. The world has changed, new ‘norms’ are unpredictable and changing by the day. People’s perceptions are subtly, or sometimes overtly, changing. The expression of these mind moves is like a whirlpool of wisdom gone mad. Introversion turning to fear and sometimes hatred, erupting into defiance and lawlessness. The stages between these reactions are dangerous, especially to mental health. The other side of the picture is the fight by scientists and doctors to overcome, and the selflessness of the many who are plodding doggedly through each arising situation.