A sense of achievement

Like no doubt many Rusters from time to time I have been prey to different moods during the course of the UK’s version of the Covid-19 crisis.

My “go to” quip for many months from March 2020 onwards was that, for me, the restrictions imposed upon us during Lockdown 1 amounted to little more than normal “modern life” for someone of my age and/or who had ever been to boarding school.

There have been many ups and downs since then, of course, but sadly – apart from discovering that a fellow contributor to this organ also held my view that our lords and masters, rather than disseminating the unvarnished truth, have only been telling the great British public what they thought we could “take” without becoming desperate, depressed or “giving up” – I’m afraid that since about mid-November I’ve become rather detached from what is probably reality.

I say this merely because, on the evidence of my own eyes as I have gone about my daily grind, it seems to me that the general public have lost the “esprit de corps” (if that’s the correct expression?) that they once had as regards restrictions upon their daily lives.

In effect, they’ve had enough and have taken the attitude “Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to do what I feel comfortable with, based upon what I know about the risks. I cannot be bothered anymore with living half a life anymore …”

As a result they’ve largely given up pretending that they’re playing in a rather superior “reality” version of a computer game and are now going about their business rather as they did before anyone had heard of the virus.

My evidence for this is simply personal observation. Any day of the week these days it seems to me that the traffic passing through my “manor” on a daily basis is no different to that in times of yore (2019 and previously).

Which brings me to the purpose of my post today.

Yesterday afternoon I had the first of what will apparently turn out to be my two vaccination jabs under the current roll-out.

It occurred thus.

On Monday I was rung by someone at my local GP surgery out of the blue. After confirming my identity, I was given an appointment for yesterday to have a jab – this I accepted, even though it was not immediately clear why I was being offered it (not that I asked for further particulars or indeed protested/challenged the opportunity).

I’m 69 and (as far as I know) in good or better health – not in the “70 plus” age bracket, or a “key worker” of any kind, or even “suffering from a potentially underlying dangerous condition”, the qualifications which I had understood rendered one eligible for the “first wave” of the vaccination roll-out.

It has occurred to me since that maybe my local GP surgery was earmarked for a first batch of – I think it is the Pfizer vaccine that takes effect by two jabs (originally three, but now up to twelve weeks apart) and which needs to be kept at some huge minus degrees Celsius.

Then, having jabbed everyone on its books in the aforementioned “at risk” categories and still having about a ton of these vaccines which have a very short effective “life” left, they had taken the decision that they might as well jab everyone they can attract to the surgery before their vaccine supply loses its “oomph”, at which point it will become useless anyway.

Hence my call to arms?

In any event it all went very efficiently and without an apparent hitch.

Somebody had evidently spent some quality time working out the practicalities. The surgery building had been turned into a glorified giant “one-way system”.

I arrived ten minutes early for my appointment and joined a short four-person queue (each at two metres distance). I gave my name – it was “ticked off” on a list – and then told to stand at the entrance to the main corridor until summoned.

Within two minutes I was told to advance to the room at the end of the corridor with a green balloon hanging above the door.

This I did. I met my nurse – she checked her computer, produced the “equipment”, did the jab and sent me on my way … all within two minutes.

Afterwards I was directed to the very back of the building and outside to a path leading between two buildings that took me back to the road (and relative civilisation).

I reached the sanctuary of my “gaff” once more – six minutes’ walk away – only about three minutes after my official appointment time. Simples.

Revisiting the events of the day last night I felt rather comforted. We keep getting showered in negative propaganda that we’ve made a Grade A cock-up in quitting the EU and now urgently need to come to terms with the reality that we’re now a third-rate nation and certainly no longer a world player.

And then something comes along like this which works like clockwork. And (I kid you not) throughout the entire operation I came across nothing but members of the public with positive, smiling faces and a sense of communal purpose, all doing nothing more than “working together” as a collective team on a mission.