High Street Medical Centre, Stonehouse

Bit different, isn't it? On the ground floor there is a pharmacy and, I'm not quite sure, but I think there are GPs too. Stonehouse is not offering the Coronavirus vaccination in a public building, despite having a.large community centre. People have to travel to Stroud for it. No doubt the medics have their reasons, and no doubt I am slightly obsessed with vaccination procedures!

In nursery yesterday I found myself chasing children with a.plastic syringe (the special school nurse gives us the unused enteral.syringes when they are past their sell by date, for water play) while they screamed and ran away. Then they all found syringes and ganged up on me and 'injected' me, mostly on the bottom and legs. What a bizarre game, very 2021, though obviously there is no screaming and running around in the medical practice where I sometimes work. (In an after school club where I worked in 2012, the children invented a game called 'Get Gafaffi'. A few years earlier, they might have been throwing shoes at a statue; or toppling it, last year....)

I digress. I was in Stonehouse at the behest of an old lady who wanted to buy some cards. When I let myself in she didn't recognise me at first, and then said I was "looking tired". Its it worrying when the 92-year-old says the 57-year old is looking run-down? Then she showed me her birthday cards (it's her birthday tomorrow, apparently) and then I handed her another pile of her own cards that were on the table, and she thought they were for sale...

Once we got that muddle sorted out, I showed her some cards that really were for sale! I think her eyesight is not very sharp because I found myself audio-describing them. She chose a selection and some notebooks, and then asked me about my own family. I told her about my Mum and how I haven't seen her for over 18 months, and that she lives near Fort William. She proceeded to tell me how, in 1952, she and a friend had once cycled from Southend on Sea to the Isle of Skye, via Fort William! I saluted her. She did not want any errands done, so I left her on the phone to her son and headed off back to the High Street.

The rain begin in earnest. Charity shops were open, but I don't need any more junk. Tried to buy a refurbished phone for a friend who may need one, but the repaired-goods shop isn't open on a Thursday. Got a hot chocolate and waited at the bus stop. Walked back home when I got to Stroud. Now I'm watching a silent film from 1921 called The Sheikh, starring Rudolph Valentino. It's on YouTube and it's for a course. As far as I can tell, it's about married women not having an easy time. I say as far as I can tell, because the print is very dark, and the jangling music is distracting