This week Liz Dawes is wondering whether her decision to stay in England this summer was entirely wise…….

Much has been written about the benefits of the Staycation, and much of it I agree with.  Airports are awful, queues are tediously long, and the removal of my Choos for security is frankly traumatising.

The cost of flying, a hire car and somewhere to stay always leaves me wondering if I haven’t actually spent lots of money staying in a house that is no nicer than mine, and whose only differentiating feature is that it exists in a slightly warmer weather zone.  And why am I doing this? Just so I can say I have been abroad?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the culture of Italy and the food of France, but often by the time I get to go on holiday I’m so exhausted that all I want to do is laze about.  Yet when I go abroad I feel I ought to see all the sites rather than laze by the pool, otherwise it’s a “waste of a trip”.  So it’s either dashing about doing the tourist thing, and getting even more exhausted, or sitting round the pool before returning home guiltily pretending that I managed to fit the Vatican, the Coliseum, the Museum of Rome and numerous art galleries into a week that I also found peaceful and restful, thank you for asking. Yikes.

So this year I decided that we would avoid all of that stress, and stay in the UK for the holidays.  After all, it’s a beautiful country and there are plenty of famous sites and interesting museums right here in good old London town.  Cheaper, more relaxing, and good for our economy. What’s not to like.

But (and it’s a big but…..)

We are half way through the summer, and I am looking at my sister’s Facebook pics of the hot and sunny Isles they’ve just returned from.  They look relaxed – and more importantly brown and warm.  I am perusing said holiday snaps in jeans and a woolly jumper.

See that’s the trouble: I am a hot house flower. I will now spend the summer wondering if I will make it from pale grey to slightly pink, with the possibility of losing one of my woollier layers if things really hot up.  Don’t get me wrong, I stand by all I have just said re foreign travel, and I love our green and pleasant land.  But I need some sun on my bones before I am forced to hibernate from yet another freezing English winter.

So if you see me in an airport queue for cheap last minute flights to somewhere hot, just make like you didn’t see me…..capiche? Brrrrrrr……..