Mad World

“Luxembourg? That’s not a place you visit, it’s somewhere you fly over!” Such was a typical reaction when I told people I was off to the small nation land-locked by Belgium, France and Germany. But I had my reasons. One was that, like my trip to Vienna a month previously,  I had paid for a hotel room there in 2020, not been able to use it thanks to the bubonic plague, and unless I filled it before the end of 2021 I would lose my money. The other reason was that by journeying to Luxembourg I would finally have visited all 27 EU countries! In 2018, on arriving back at Bristol Airport from yet another trip to Gran Canaria - a rubbish one - I noticed a poster listing all EU members. It was in that moment the idea struck me. I realised I’d been to 15 of the countries already, over many years, so why not set a target of doing all of them? In the spirit of the slogan on the T-shirt I got from Spiked - “Love Europe, hate the EU” - in a mad flurry I set about visiting the likes of Bulga...

Why did I visit Austria? Why now? Here’s why: I’d been due to stay in Vienna (and Luxembourg) in 2020, having paid for non-refundable hotel rooms but had been forced to cancel (twice); both hotels said I could use the booking until the end of 2021. Little did I realise then that it wouldn’t be until 2021 was nearly over that a trip would be practical. So I embarked on this three-night break because I sort of had to, and a few tweaks to the testing requirements meant that this was unlikely to be as much of an ordeal as my trip to Slovenia in September was.  It’s no surprise most people aren’t booking holidays at the moment. In the ten days leading up to the flight I received five emails from Ryanair, four of which were identical, headed ESSENTIAL REMINDER FOR YOUR TRIP in bold, capital letters,  red and  underlined. A couple of lines down, “Failure to comply with local travel requirements may result in you being fined or denied boarding or entry into your destination” ...

When I told a friend I was off to Slovenia he questioned why I’d go to a country that had only vaccinated around 64% of its population, compared to 95% in the UK. I explained to him that the vaccination rates of a country would not have the slightest bearing on whether I would choose to go there, because these vaccines don’t appear to stop transmission or infection, they only possibly lessen the chance of serious illness in the person who has taken them. And besides, I needed a break from this stifling little island. What I found, though, was a mixed picture. In some ways it’s better in Slovenia than in the UK, but in many other ways it's much worse, making our regulations seem light and liberal. That I had not expected. Getting a flight can often be stressful; in Covid times multiply that by ten. I awoke (after bad dreams) two hours before my alarm on the day of my flight and was unable to get back to sleep, a million things going through my mind, a million things that could go ...

In February 2030, a month-long trial takes place at the United Nations in Geneva. On trial are the surviving leaders and scientists who in 2020 and 2021 instigated the most draconian public health response in history, which went on to have profound and overwhelmingly negative consequences in numerous different areas of life. Day 1 The leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020, Xi Jinping, was assassinated by his own comrades in 2025, so cannot stand trial for wilfully covering up the origins of Covid-19 and seeding it throughout the world by failing to stop international flights out of China. The current leader of China, his cousin, Ming Chai, refuses to attend the trial, sending instead an elderly scientist who is said to have worked at the Wuhan lab of Virology. He fails to say a single word in response to questions, so the first day concludes unsatisfactorily. Day 2 Footage is shown in court of Chinese people collapsing in the street in early 2020, footage that had been beame...