V Day

It’s barely 6 am and I’m wide awake.  It feels like Christmas. I am jittery. I can’t sleep properly because today is the day I am to be vaccinated. Well the first jab at least. I’m that excited. My appointment is at 9:05 and I am sufficiently fearful of oversleeping that I have set no fewer than three alarm clocks to ring at staggered intervals and at different distances from the bed to ensure  that I am not only awake but out of bed. This cunning plan works well. Too well perhaps as one of the alarms is still ringing intermittently four hours later when I return to the house. In my haste I have pressed ‘snooze’ rather than ‘cancel’. Still it has served its purpose. I am out of bed albeit without the slightest idea of where I am. Or who I am for that matter. But the clocks have fulfilled their part of the bargain. I am up at 5:58, standing bewildered on the landing and wondering where the the last alarm clock although it’s surely loud enough to wake the neighbours. They don’t call them thunder clocks for nothing.  I briefly entertain the notion of going back to bed for an extra few winks but fortunately am sufficiently compos mentis to acknowledge the folly of such action.

For a minute or two I stare blankly into my wardrobe in search of inspiration. What is the etiquette for a mass vaccination? It’s not exactly black tie. A bit like going to work then – commuter train chic? Perhaps more casual? Or should one try to scale sartorial pinnacles? I plump for a pair of forest green cords, my t-shirt with the joke about the 2010 Icelandic volcano and a Fair Isle jumper. A quick glance outside and the sight of my crisply frosted car adds my father’s Crombie and a dark blue trilby/fedora to complete the ensemble. Throw in my brown suede Chelsea boots and I am good to go. I blow my reflection a kiss, instantly embarrassing myself. 

Out of the front door and into the car. Then out of the car and back into the house when I realise it is still only 6:30 and my appointment, only some 5 miles away, is not until 9:05. Even allowing for the most event-ridden journey – avalanche in Sevenoaks, escaped panther at Capel, plague of frogs in Southborough – this is still not going to take me over 2 ½ hours.

Cornflakes and coffee I decide.

It’s still only 7 am even after a couple of weapons-grade espressos.

I turn on the wireless to catch the news and just as quickly switch it off – more Royal family shenanigans. I have a limited interest in such nonsense at the best of times. Royal intrigues simply do not hold my attention. More than I can handle at this hour. Whatever happened to the shipping forecast? 

I find myself pacing the living room. Until I remember that these are the boots I was wearing the previous week when I trod in some undisclosed cat poo in the garden. Probably not my best thinking to pace the living room. I hastily check the living room carpet. Fortunately all is well  with the rug and the shoes pass a brief olfactory inspection.

7:30 a.m. It suddenly dawns on me that the schools are back today and therefore the roads will potentially be choc-a-bloc with school buses, cyclists who haven’t cycled in months and schoolchildren with the road sense of hedgehogs. Plus the usual monday morning mayhem. Better get on the road I decide.

Ten minutes later I am in Tonbridge, parked at the vaccination centre and wondering how I’m going to kill 90 minutes or so in the Sports Centre car park. The cafe is closed –   obviously – and it has never dawned on me to take a thermos or a book. Not that it would have done anyway. My bladder is on a hair trigger these days. Challenging it with a flask of coffee would be supremely ill judged. 

The only reading matter to hand is the car handbook. It turns out to be one of the least compelling reads ever. Not exactly a page turner. On the other hand it fills the time until the vaccination centre opens. And I now know how to do a full annual service, refill the aircon and change all the bulb units. Still a little bit shaky on the electrics.

Still half an hour before my my allotted time slot. I overhear one elderly gentleman saying that there is no strict regulation of appointment times. Sheepishly, I join the queue hoping nobody will notice my early arrival. It turns out they notice but evidently do not care. As long as the system has you detected, directed, consented and punctured, all is well.

Ralph and his iPad identifies me, logs me into the system and then passes me over to Celine whose role is to point left or right depending on which is the shorter of the two queues. I turn out to be a Lefty and am greeted by Jean whose job it is to consent me and satisfy herself that I really want the vaccine. She starts by asking me if I know why I’m here. “Is this not beginners yoga?” I ask. Eventually she is satisfied that am a safe bet on anaphylaxis and passes me on to another pointing person. “Cubicle number 8” she announces in a tone that fleetingly reminds me of Argos. I’m greeted by Janine, the nurse, in a manner that is disproportionately enthusiastic for such an early hour of the day. “Which arm?” she asks “We need to leave you with one good arm”. I quickly check that we are talking about vaccination and not amputation. My meds have not really kicked in this morning and I am slow in baring my arm. Janine wrestles me out of my coat with the kind of fevered urgency of newlyweds. I toy with the idea of mentioning this to her but fortunately think better of it. She is after all holding a syringe. “A little scratch” she says and it’s all done. Nurses no longer say “a little prick”. Apparently some patients take it personally.

Janine’s assistant passes me a card with my next appointment and a sticker saying “I’ve been brave”. OK I made the last bit up. A quick thankyou and I am I shown out via the tradesman’s entrance so to speak, past huge skips of rodent-riddled rubbish with the instruction not to drive for 15 minutes ringing in my ears. Fair enough – I can brush up on the car’s electrics.

Home 10 am. Job done.

2020 – return to sender.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I will be glad to see the back of 2020. Normally when it reaches the end of the year I find myself in reflective post-Christmas bonhomie, buoyed by the occasional glass of sherry and mince pie. Through the rose tinted optics of hindsight I find myself mulling over the year and its many joys. A warm fire, a Val Doonican jumper and grandad slippers and the illusion is complete. Gosh, is that snow outside?

Not this year. Not in 2020.

If ever there was a year to see the back of, this is it. Australian bushfires to start with. Huge news story in any other year but this. Climate change as a global emergency. Wasn’t that enough to be going on with? We are in a full tilt race to save the planet. A full-time job in its own you might think. But no, the media circus moves on. And what happened to little Greta? Nowhere to be seen. Or, more accurately I think, avoided by the press who have other fish to fry. Never mind the planet frying. As far as I’m concerned that’s high enough on the apocalypse-o-meter

But apparently not.

You can be forgiven for missing it but there it was, some tiny little news item, buried in between the Wichita under 30s Bake off challenge and the list of unpaid parking tickets. Something about a virus crossing over from wild animals to man. Hardly a news item really. Within a month there was cause for concern in China. Another month and the rest of the world was beginning to wake up to the defining news story of the year. Suddenly attention was focused on China and its food markets. And before you know it, it is ‘traced’ to bats. Specifically people eating bats. I ask you.

For goodness sake what kind of a person eats bats? There are no bat recipes, no bat cookbooks and not a single Internet bat bistro devoted to the bat gourmet.

Perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps, in the Far East, the Burger King Bat Super Whopper is competing for the stomachs and minds of the Chinese with the McDonald’s Big Bat combo platter?

And to follow? The bat pavlova, bat cobbler, sorbet de bat? And then there are the canapés – bat goujons, pate de bat, bat fricassee, bats on horseback? No, the reason there are no bat recipes is because we are not meant to eat them. It’s not discrimination. It’s not being Battist. It’s just common sense. Besides, they’re very crunchy.

Back in China, some clown ignores common sense and tucks into the bat sushi platter. All well and good (even if rather disgusting). Unfortunately his particular selection of choice bat cuts contains a previously unknown respiratory virus.

Viruses don’t normally cross species barriers. They snuggle up to the same species. But when they do cross species, they do so with a vengeance. Before you know it, we have an epidemic in China. It turns out to be such a hit that other adjacent countries take it as well. Another couple of weeks and it’s a pandemic. Short for panic epidemic. (No it isn’t but it sounds good). People start filling hospital beds. Then they start dying. Some wear face masks, some don’t. Panic breeds more panic. World leaders, used to fluffing news about a new national traffic management scheme, or a regional document archive plough their collective ostrich heads into the sand. Then there is a vaccine. Then there are two. Then more. Then the virus hits the gas pedal, reluctant to be outdone by mere humans. A feeling of déjà vu? Wait till the third wave.

And to think that we were concerned about forest fires in January. At the end of December, we are virtually praying for forest fires – to kill the virus or kill the news stories.

Dear Sir, my year 2020 is faulty. Can I have my money back please.