Vaccinated

The lad was a tad annoyed on Monday morning when we got passed by a dog out for a run with his owner. It’s been a while since he been taken out for a run and it’ll be a while longer yet.

As I arrive home the NHS text to say they are now vaccinating the over 40s! Get in there. I do indeed and manage to book a same day appointment at the old Lenton TV studios at 3:30. It seems a bit odd that Nottingham has gone from not having enough vaccine a week ago to now inviting everyone over 40.

A few hours later Nottingham NHS admit they got it wrong and the message should have been for over 50s only. Oops. At least it still means me but I wonder how many others got in before they corrected it. Seemingly not many because when I go down at 3:30 it isn’t busy at all.

I am stopped at the door by one person with a laptop who takes my details while another person gives me the ‘do you or anyone in your household have symptoms’ talk and asks me if I’m ok with needles. I tell them I’m not and that I might faint.

They don’t seem fazed and I am then sent to queue up outside the TV studio that we were last in for Question Time in 1998. There are just two of us in the queue.

Then I am sent to a second person with a laptop who check me in again, gives me loads of leaflets and another talk, again asking me if I’m ok to go ahead. Not sure what they’d do if I said no.

Next will be one of two nurses administering the injections, neither of which look old enough to wield a needle. One is 5 foot 2, about 7 stone, blonde, with a ponytail (female). The other 6 foot 5, about 15 stone, brunette, with a ponytail (male). I know which way this is going to go.

Then out of nowhere another person appears, older with a reassuring motherly smile, although far younger than both me and my mother, as if handpicked for the person who might fainy. She has a laptop too, she checks me in again, asks me if I want to back out again and then when I’m not looking jabs me in the arm.

I am then directed to a seat where I am supposed to sit for 15 minutes but I abort after 5. Yet another person with a laptop, the IT contract must be worth some serious money, checks me out and lets me escape.

The next day I wake up with a sore arm and a temperature. I think someone may have injected me with virus. I read all the vaccine leaflets they gave me to see if I can pass it on or whether I need to self-isolate but there’s nothing about that in the leaflets, so I take the boys of for their walk.

(Monday 15^th March)