A Grand Day Out.

(With apologies to Mr Park.)

Today I went to the Uttoxeter Heath Community Centre for my Covid booster vaccination. OK, so here’s what happened when I went there last year:

I drove into the car park to find it full, so I had to go and find somewhere to park that wasn’t too far away. The queue of people extended from the gate to the entrance of the Centre. The vestibule was crowded with people, some queuing to register and some just hanging around and looking bored. The large ante room at the side of the vestibule was also crowded with people, some sitting and some standing because there was nowhere left to sit (I managed to find the edge of a table to perch on.) The main hall in which the jabbing was being performed was laid out with many seats, but there was still standing room only. I finally got jabbed an hour and a half after walking into the building.

My neighbour told me that he went there last week and the situation was the same as last year, so I wasn’t relishing the experience. But here’s what happened today:

I drove onto the car park to find three empty spaces (of which I took only one since I’m considerate like that.) By the time I climbed out of the car, two people had left so there were four empty spaces. There was no queue to get into the building. There was no queue inside the building. The previously crowded ante room was locked off and empty. The main hall had about six people in it. (I didn’t count them because I was too anxious to begin reading Maddie’s – see previous post – Field Journals book, but six would be about right.) I was called into Pod No 3 within ten minutes, and then had my details recorded and my stabbing performed over the next five. I even had time to ask the woman: ‘Are you a nurse?’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Do you know how to do injections?’ ‘Yes; I’ve been trained.’ ‘OK, that’ll do. Carry on.’ And so she did, and I hardly felt a thing.

I walked out of the Centre feeling slightly light-headed, not from the effect of the vaccination but from the euphoria consequent on it having taken only twenty minutes in total. So then I went to Tesco to get petrol and a few groceries, and was back home half an hour earlier than I’d expected to be leaving the Centre. Not a bad day, eh?

The only problem was that I’d had very little time to read Maddie’s opus, and most of what I had read was about mortality rates in upstate New York during the 19^th century. So tonight I read lots more – this time about the dig itself – and found several items of conversation between my good self and the author on Maddie’s blog, which I was following at the time. I was surprised that she would go to the trouble of repeating these conversations in the book, especially since my remarks were meant to be amusing but were mostly a little fatuous, but decided on the obvious explanation. No doubt it was to reveal to the readers that American archaeologists are pretty smart, whereas ageing Englishmen who left school at sixteen are only good for providing exercise to the muscles which make the eyes roll. Nice one, Mad.

(And it’s worth repeating here that of all the people I’ve known in my life, Maddie is right up there with the most esteemed of the Valued Ones. I love her to bits, you know, in the nicest possible way.)

Time for coffee now, and then I’ll have a spinach and coleslaw sandwich a bit later. The coleslaw is in place of the more usual mayo because I feel the need to celebrate.