The forgotten joy of spontaneity

If you ask people what they’ve missed out on since the pandemic, they’ll probably lament their cancelled plans. Weddings postponed, birthday parties axed and family reunions moved to Zoom. Me, I’ve missed the unplanned. The spontaneity that knocks your routine, muddles your diary and lands you tipsy in the pub on a Monday night when you were supposed to be at the gym.

For more than a year, our lives have been ruled by the principle of ‘safety first’. Accidents — even the fun ones — have been avoided at all costs. It has been illegal to act on a whim or at least, in the better times, very strictly regulated.

So when friends suggested several weeks ago that we book a long weekend in Porto, I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate the last days of lockdown and the return of spontaneous living. A three-night getaway in a foreign city is almost designed to be overwhelming: with not much time and with so many possible things to do, you don’t really know where to start. You just have to get up and see where the day takes you.

In truth, I can’t quite describe the weekend as spontaneous — or without stress. The drip-drip of rumours that Portugal was going to be taken off the ‘green list’ for travel led to frantic WhatsApp messages and cancellations on the Thursday morning before our trip. Then we decided to rebook accommodation in the afternoon, when the Transport Secretary confirmed the quarantine mandate wouldn’t take effect until after we were due to return. This is a traveller’s life now: hanging on Grant Shapps’s every word.

The admin required to be free these days is horribly complicated — pricey too.