How to get into a club and on to a plane

Disaster struck the Young family last Friday. My 12-year-old son Charlie woke up with a temperature. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t matter, but we were in the Dolomites and due to fly back to England from Venice later that day. On the flight out, we’d all had our temperature checked with an infrared thermometer pointed at our foreheads, and there was a similar policy in place at Marco Polo airport for our return journey. Would Charlie’s fever mean none of us would be allowed to board the plane? And would we be interned in some ghastly Travelodge for 14 days?

The responsible thing would have been to remain in Italy until Charlie recovered, just in case he had the virus. But changing the flights would have cost an arm and a leg, and the risk of Charlie infecting any other passengers was practically zero. For one thing, I’m fairly sure he’s already had Covid.