I suspect I am one of the few who haven't been an a proper annual holiday in 20 years. For some holidays are more stressful than being in work, the arrangements to travel, the packing, the accommodation, getting around the language barrier are all factors in the stress. Staying at home, not booking a flight or, taking the easy way, arranging a package holiday for an amazingly cheap price is another option, amazed at how the cost seems close to the cost of staying at home. Is it any wonder in this murky world of cut price holidays that Thomas Cook have gone bust, struggling to compete for the cheapest offer, since there was no meaningful profit in the contract.
The media has been saturated with stories of people missing weddings in Las Vegus christening's in Australia, even funerals in Timbuktu. It seems that the normal compass of family and friends is now so widely spread we need a plane to cover the ground between us. Whether we should feel sorrow for those who have been stranded or feel that with so many people in the country barely able to make it through the week financially and certainly unable to afford the cost of an overseas holiday, should we temper our sympathy and rather ask the question, if you get something for virtually nothing, please judge whether it's a good deal for all concerned.
People have become enticed into thinking that everything they do is covered in terms of recovery, bodies and money are all retrievable if things go wrong. In my day we bore the brunt of any miscalculation or injury with the ready assumption that it was, in part our fault. We would accept that if a journey was cancelled, or a company went bust it was all part of having to work in a cut price market and we took it on the chin. In today's world of rights and the lawyers who chase them, the companies offering a service are made to bear the cost, irrespective of circumstance.
We were always willing to accept the ups and downs in life as part of the game. We weren't insured for every move we made, we didn't count the cost of failure into our package and readily accepted our share of the reasons for something going wrong. Todays Teflon kid assumes that nothing sticks and that it's always someone else's fault if they are in any way inconvenienced, this was not part of our psych. When things go wrong, so what, there was always the next opportunity, another chance and the more you escaped from the bubble of conformity the more likely you exposed yourself to things happening over which you have no control.
If I missed a wedding or a christening by not being able to fly halfway around the world then one should rather question the circumstances of being so far away. The sums of money people, ordinary people are prepared to spend on a wedding in some exotic place is beyond me. The tickets for not only yourself and the bride but also for bridesmaids and family members runs into many thousands, it seems ludicrous to spend so much
Thomas Cook are no more and as our high streets close their doors on so many household retail names soon the only company you will be trading with will be a combination of Amazon and Goggle, both with head offices in Lichtenstein where a right of reply might be more than you can expect.
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