Brits go home!

Have you seen, I mean really seen, what the UK has to offer the holiday-maker? We have mountains big enough to be dangerous yet small enough to climb in an afternoon. Some of the best beaches in the world line our shores. Sights, sailing, swimming, scuba diving... all the activities you can imagine. Admittedly the weather is unreliable but so much variety is in driving distance you can wing it on the day. You want history, we got history. You want entertainment, art, shopping... it’s there in spades.

Plus you can speak the language fluently (if not maybe all that competently) you know what the road signs mean, your phone will work without any interruption and you can decipher the cultural shorthand so you know, for instance, that that ‘artisan’ bar may be less your cup of tea than Ye Olde Inne on the green. And of course, you can always get tea. And chips.

Or why not a ‘staycation’? Unless you’re on the old King Cole chances are you spend all your time going to work, doing the daily chores, eating and sleeping and never get to really live in and enjoy your own environs. Why go ‘all inclusive’ with a horde of strangers via a cattle class travel system to sweat under an alien sun. Really? You actually go for the sun? You do realise it’s the exact, same one we have here, yes? I pity you.

Think of the economy. Instead of exporting your earnings overseas to buy hangovers and tacky souvenirs, which only get lost along with the rest of your luggage, why not just have a luxury week at home. Splash out a bit on days and evenings out and inject a little love into local businesses. I’m serious, it makes more sense now than ever before, especially as your foreign retreat may now come with the added uncertainty of returning home with all your limbs intact.

Turkey is a ticking time bomb, North Africa is more or less off-limits and even the USA is about to go all ‘Mississippi Burning’ on its ass. France is in flames and Germany set to follow as all around the besieged European peace and love project borders are going up and fear is rising. The world is a dark and dangerous place right now and it is neither racist nor islamophobic to say so; how islamophobic, on a scale of one to please-don’t-cut-my-head-off, is blacklisting all muslim countries as potential holiday destinations?

I reckon we could all do to forego cultural enrichment for a year or so while we work out what the hell is going on and in the meantime make a bit of an effort to reconnect ourselves to our own heritage. Rather than trying to contract skin cancer on a crowded beach we could fill the coffers of the National Trust, explore our national parks, thrill to the theatre, the finest in the world or simply get out and enjoy the garden. All this and you don’t have to miss your favourite soaps, if that floats your boat.

The greenest and most pleasant land on the planet!

Think about it. In the sixties Bruce Forsyth sang "I’m backing Britain" as part of a national drive to reinvigorate the nation. Well why not, in this fractured, divisive, post-Brexit-decision purgatory, get behind that same spirit and say, stuff Sardinia, toss off Turkey, fuck Florida... I’m back, in Britain. And nobody can call you racist for doing so.