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Munich … looks tempting.
Munich … looks tempting. Photograph: Ageev Rostislav/Alamy Stock Photo
Munich … looks tempting. Photograph: Ageev Rostislav/Alamy Stock Photo

I've got Covid claustrophobia. Get me a flight to … anywhere

This article is more than 3 years old
Suzanne Moore

I spend hours online looking for a cheap flight. I’m determined to get away, but where?

A man with a package came to the door the other day demanding proof of my age. I didn’t know what I had ordered that would require such a thing, but I fetched my passport all the same.

In my ruptured, sleepless nights, I am a midnight rambler – though only online. I had forgotten that I had ordered a scraper to remove my daughter’s Bernie Sanders 2016 sticker from my front window, which today seems a bit sad.

So I am in possession of this dangerous weapon – but it could just as easily have been a flight to somewhere I didn’t know I wanted to go. Ryanair has me permanently tempted by obscure regions of Poland for £9.99. Part of this is not just because I want a holiday, but because I cannot visit my youngest in Ireland, as I had planned.

I am feeling so trapped by Covid that one night I decided to sell my house. Yeah, I will move one way or another; downsize while waiting for the apocalypse. This has greatly upset my multigenerational household, the members of whom would be made homeless by this fantastic idea. I should have expected this – but house prices are booming, we’re in a recession and at 4am this made perfect sense to me.

At times like this, I really wish I could distract myself with Bake Off, Strictly or any other of those retrograde programmes that everyone seems to love – but I can’t. It’s not snobbishness, or that I do anything better with my time.

Unless, that is, you count spending hours looking for cheap flights on Skyscanner then discovering that Vietnam wouldn’t let me in, buying adults-only DIY stuff with blades in or looking at houses I can’t afford in places I don’t want to live.

Anyway, Munich looks interesting. I am determined to go somewhere, though the choice narrows by the day. It is now anywhere that will have me.

Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist

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