Gatwick

The private hospital room in Chelsea was so relaxing I would have stayed for a week if it was affordable. It was more luxurious than the all-inclusive in Tenerife I went to last year, but sadly not in the same price bracket. One night in a hospital with designer soaps, a menu in Arabic and a gorgeous view of the London skyline nearly broke the bank, so I had to let them discharge me as planned the morning after my operation. There wasn’t really that much wrong with me, and certainly not enough to call it ‘a journey’, as all health crises are now termed. I could have posted a

At Gatwick airport, after an hour and 15 minutes in a snaking queue system apparently purposely designed to infect as many as possible with Covid-19, and our three bladders inflated like party balloons, we finally presented ourselves before an available passport control officer. Early fifties, hatless, bald and recruited from the working class, he was the first English person on English soil I’d spoken to for 18 months. I formed the impression of a man who liked a drink. ‘And these two are?’ he said. ‘My grandsons,’ I said, looking at them besottedly in spite of us having lived together in insupportable heat for a week. ‘And you’ve come from