Friday 16th November

I have never seen London so busy, in fact it was almost empty in the summer, what with Boris warning everyone to stagger their journeys or work from home.  But now it is madness; the tubes are crammed to overflowing and the roads are almost gridlocked.  Strange for a country that is supposed to be in the grips of a recession.  And as usual there are road-works going on all over the place, and there appears to be no let-up in the weekend train disruption.  So what is the explanation; unless it might just be that no-one is on holiday at the moment.

Most people get at least four weeks holiday a year, and the country will shut up shop for two weeks as usual at Christmas, except for the shopping centres, whose poor staff are expected to work while the rest of us shop.  Most of us like to get away if we can during the summer, which now stretches from mid April to late October, when we still hope to catch a glimpse of the sun.

Winter ski holidays are almost exclusively from January to March, as are those Winter breaks which we all aspire to, but only a few can afford, when the Caribbean and Mexico, or Thailand and East Africa appear to  be beacons of sunshine in our gloomy landscape.  But November is almost no-one’s ideal month for a holiday, the proximity to Christmas, with all that added expense and preparation makes it a month that few people choose for their holidays.

So instead, they are here – on the tubes, in the shops, bustling along the pavements, taking up every available seat in Pret, and of course, no matter how much I might complain about them – I am one of them myself.