“Why have we been given a card marked ‘M’?”
Thus spoke Mrs Shacklepin as we stood in a very short queue of about four people at the vaccination centre at the racecourse of the Big City. Adjacent was a far longer queue, snaking away to the door, labelled ‘P’. Earlier, as we had swept past a long line of people waiting, I had airily commented to them,
“So sorry, we’re Club class.”
It seemed funny at the time (like all my supposed witty comments), even if it produced no response. Now it was not so funny.
As is the way with all queues, the queue next to us was moving much faster than ours, though still slowly, the head of the queue breaking off periodically to go to a booth to be interrogated before moving on to be given their booster vaccination in another booth. Jane and I had been standing for 40 minutes and, in that time, our queue had moved up only one person. As far as we could make out, that one person was sitting in a booth (labelled ‘M’) and simply chatting affably to the nurse behind the desk. The memsahib was not happy. In addition to the opening question (repeated several times), she asked why we were not moving. As I pointed out to her finally, and in exasperation, I did not know and would she please put on another record? If this had been the Big Brother television programme, I pointed out to her, I would have voted her out long ago. My plea went unheeded until, finally, she worked out the significance of the ‘’M’ and the ‘P’: they stood for ‘Pfizer’ and ‘Moderna’; most people were being boosted with the Pfizer vaccine, but a select few – including us – would be receiving the Moderna serum. After this inference, Jane changed the record to one asking,
“Why are we to be given the Moderna vaccine?”,
to which, of course, I could only reply that I did not know.
I stood, implacably, in the ‘stand easy’ position as I had been taught so many years before at Dartmouth, while Jane hopped from one foot to the other and fidgeted like a ten year old on a car journey who asked periodically, “Are we there yet?” Privately, I agreed with her sentiments: we had been standing there for a very long time, unlike the previous occasions when we had received our initial Astra-Zeneca vaccinations and were in and out of the vaccination centre like a dose of salts.
We had been called up for our booster shots the previous week, it being precisely six calendar months plus one week since our last jab on 1 May. We duly logged on to the NHS website and were offered several local locations where the deed could be done, but chose the racecourse (14 miles away) because we had used it before and because the parking was free and plentiful. Later, we were separately invited by our GP practice to be vaccinated locally, but we declined as we were already committed. This decision was seized upon by Jane as an error on my part: clearly, she opined, if we had opted to be vaccinated by our surgery then we would not have been chosen for the Moderna vaccine and would not now be standing here for 40 minutes. I sighed, not for the first time reflecting on the width of my back and the depth of the scars thereon. Finally, after some 50 minutes of standing, we were summoned – together – direct to a vaccination booth where two medical staff combined the functions of identification, interrogation and vaccination. A third nurse stood by, presumably to catch the body as it slumped into a dead faint on sight of the needle. Jane immediately asked why we had been singled out for the Moderna vaccine and was told that the selection was done on an entirely random basis. I recognised the familiar look on her face that said she was not at all satisfied by the answer (presumably she thought it was all a conspiracy by the government to make her life a misery), but she said no more. In the event, the nurses decided not to give her the booster because she had only just recovered from shingles and was, in any case, on a course of antibiotics for yet another malady. Only I was vaccinated and I was ordered to sit in a recovery chair afterwards for precisely fifteen minutes, lest I embarrass everyone by collapsing. Jane was grudgingly allowed to leave and wait for me in the car and to arrange a later booster for herself. So there you go: yet another milestone in the Covid19 chapter of the Book of Shacklepin. As I drove home, I reflected on the many vaccinations I had received in the course of my service with the Royal Navy, including a hefty dose of heaven-knows-what just before the Gulf War; as a correspondent in my newspaper commented in a slightly different context the other day, my opinion was not sought nor would any objection have been entertained. I certainly never heard of anyone compulsorily being required to sit down for fifteen minutes after a jab: in the Service you just got on with life onboard as usual. As to the one hour to complete a very simple process, we never did find out what the problem was. I felt a bit rough for 24 hours after the booster – headache, feeling cold and tired – but I was as right as rain after that. Jane has that further joy to come. I hope for the sake of the dispensing staff that they don’t plan to give her the Moderna vaccine.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I have stopped routinely monitoring the Covid statistics now as the overall death rate in the UK is running at about the usual 5-year average for the country. I gather that the number of positive tests is now dropping, as are the death rates attributable to Covid and the hospitalisations, though these are increasing in mainland Europe. Predictably, some European countries have reverted to social distancing, masks, curfews, vaccination passports, or all four. Everyday life in England (as opposed to Scotland, Wales and Norther Ireland) is closer to being back to normal than it has been so far in the epidemic, though all museums, galleries and a few small private shops still insist that customers sterilise hands, stay apart and wear masks. In the last week, for England, you had a 0.2% chance of being struck by lightning, but a 0.03% chance of catching Covid, a 0.001% chance of being hospitalised because of Covid, and a 0.0002% chance of dying from it, yet some people are still genuinely very frightened. Cunard offered me a cruise the other day that would have required me to wear a mask at all times outside my cabin except on the upper deck; it was not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.
As we pass the 20-month point in the Covid 19 epidemic, the planet about to die in the next minute, and winter beginning to descend on us, it is so uplifting that comedic moments still prevail to lift us from our anxiety and fear. I refer to the latest woke edicts to emerge from institutions in our society. Steam locomotives have now been declared racist by the Railways Museum because of their key role in colonialism, an odd choice in many ways, not least because generally the engines are black. The locomotives join the game of chess among racist inanimate objects, the latter because of the custom in the game for White to go first. Of famous historical figures, Queen Victoria, the painter Gainsborough and the poet Wordsworth are among those singled out by the National Gallery as racists, the last-named because, “his sister’s rented cottage was leased by a slave owner”. One early National Gallery donor, a clergyman, has similarly been vilified because, “his sister-in-law was from a slave-owning family”. This, as the saying goes, is picking out the black pepper from the flea droppings. After I laughed heartily over these appalling revelations at breakfast, I reflected soberly that someone on the National Gallery or Railway Museum payroll (and therefore funded by the tax payer) was actually being paid to churn out this utter garbage. Will it ever end? In some ways, I hope not – I don’t get many laughs these days. They will be coming for Jane next: her great-grandmother and all those before her owned plantations in Jamaica. Oh dear: reparations might be demanded from me from Jane’s £350 Barclaycard bill that I inherited when we married.
We managed a few good walks when last on the boat in Devonshire but, alas, on the last one Jane stumbled on a farm track and keeled over like a felled tree, flat out on the tarmac. Naturally, I asked the usual inane question offered by everyone in these circumstances:
“Are you all right?”
Why do we always say that? Conscious of the (dubious) maxim that one should not let the patient worry about injuries and to make light of the situation, I then grabbed her by the armpits and hoisted her back to her feet and dusted her off. Only then did I practise proper First Aid by feeling her limbs for broken bones. In short, dear reader, I made a complete dog’s breakfast of responding to an emergency, such poor response then being compounded by my replying to a motorist who had stopped and offered to drive us back to the boat,
“Oh no, she’s fine; we’ll walk”.
Of course, we accepted the lift, which had been very kindly offered by a housekeeper at the nearby farm. I may say, in passing, that it gladdened the heart to encounter such kindness and I did write to the lady to thank her afterwards. Jane was quite shaken by the incident and picked up grazes on her arms and shin, but fortunately no fractures. What she did do, however, was wrench her back and it is only now beginning to improve. In the midst of all that, she picked up an unrelated infection elsewhere and had to take a course of antibiotics. What next? Fortunately, her tongue has been unaffected by this incident and infection, and she very helpfully has been coaching me in First Aid and the care of casualties ever since. I feel a course of diversion is necessary, so I have decided to have my hernia operated upon though, the NHS waiting list being what it is because of repeated lockdowns, I may not go under the knife before I am six feet under. In the interim, I wince bravely when on long walks or when Jane gives forth the tongue of bad report to friends about my response to accident victims; this provides a useful reminder to her of my fortitude and vulnerability in the face of disability and pain. It has worked so far, just.
Reports about the military continue to disturb. It appears that the British Army will shortly be introducing circular reporting on officers: the practice of soliciting the opinion of subordinates on an officer’s performance as part of the promotion process. Apparently the Royal Navy has been using a slightly similar process for some time. I have severe reservations on such an approach on disciplinary grounds and it will encourage naval officers – for example – to be “Popularity Jacks”. In my career, I did not expect ratings to like me (I think few did), but I did hope that they would respect me: these are our Armed Forces, not Marks & Spencer. On the Continent, the French Army (and others) has been declared to be subject to the European Working Time Directive, with limited working hours and the views of soldiers being sought regarding forthcoming deployments. Back on the home front, a female Corporal in the British Army is being court-martialled for allegedly punching soldiers in the stomach if they answered a question incorrectly (a practice of which I strongly disapprove). In the witness testimony, one male soldier said that the punch had winded him and “made him cry”. Good grief. I am now faced with a dilemma: should I start learning Russian or Mandarin?
So here we are with Christmas only 41 days away and Jane about to place her order with our local farm for our customary rib of beef (we are not fond of turkey). I am reminded of the time when a friend of ours ordered his turkey from a local farmer and, on Christmas Eve, duly turned up to collect it only to find that the farmer had no record of the order. Dusk was falling and time was of the essence. My friend berated the farmer at length on his staff’s lack of efficiency and the general situation, describing the imminent misery and starvation on the part of my friend’s family because of a ruined Christmas. The farmer was most apologetic and managed to find a turkey from his reserve stock, refusing to take any money for the bird because of his mistake. Mollified, my friend accepted the bird and went home. As he entered the house, the telephone was ringing. The call was from another local farmer:
“Farmer Giles here. We have that turkey that you ordered in September and we’re about to close up for Christmas. Can you come and collect it?”
Jane has been slogging away all day, preparing food for visitors, who are coming to stay next week. The dining room table has been laid, the best wine glasses polished and deployed, and I have been detailed off to check all electrical and plumbing systems for correct operation before their arrival. I offered to help in the kitchen but, perhaps mindful of my disasters when helping her in the past, I was shooed out. Below me, as I write, the radio is blasting out music from the 60s and 70s to the accompaniment of hissing steam, clattering pans and the odd unladylike expletive. Wonderful smells waft up the stairs, but I feel that I am well out of it. Helpfully, and determined to do my bit, up here in the study I have produced a laminated set of Captains Standing Orders (CSOs) to define the preparations that must take place in our household as a precursor to the arrival of visitors:
“Four hours before the arrival of overnight visitors, the Executive Officer will report to me:
‘House ready in all respects to receive visitors’.
This will be taken to mean:…”
I shall place that in the guest room as part of the Quality Assurance process. I am sure that Jane will appreciate this publication but, just in case, I will at least have witnesses around for when she finds it. She is such a good sport, you know.
14 November 2021
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 