Going for it

What a horrid day this has been! Rain battering the back of the house; wind howling in the chimney; still gloomy till well on in the morning and again by 4pm ... it made the prospect of hibernation pretty appealing. But I had booked an appointment for my booster jag, and began to wonder if part of my stress was caused by wondering if they'd give it to me if I was poorly ...

I was managing quite well, keeping calm, avoiding stress - apart from a brief fling involving computer passwords and Himself and Amazon - and gradually began to wonder if I wasn't feeling the dizziness dissipate and become instead a tight feeling inside the workings of one ear - the kind of thing inhaling menthol and steam can sometimes alleviate. So when the time came, I got Himself to drive me to Cowal Golf Club - a place where I may have been once in all the almost 48 years I've lived here, a place just down the road from the school in which I taught, a place even closer to the house where I used to visit with my new baby, wheeling him round from the council house we lived in to see the wife of one of Himself's new colleagues, also possessed of a new firstborn. But golf? Never. Maybe one social event, once ...?

Anyway, that's where my collage comes from. In a welcome break in the rain, I trotted up the little path in the first photo, registered my name (a perfectly mature-looking woman, standing chatting to the staff, announced "Miss!" when I was asked for my first name, then explained that she'd never known any other for me - funny how it follows one around), and joined a strangely shifting queue of seated people, mostly aged (top right: the strange angle is not because I was lying on the floor, but because I was being discreet). The jaggy bit was done over at the windows (bottom left) and was moderately painful, and I was told to sit down for ten minutes so that they could be sure I wouldn't collapse. Apparently this is a thing with the Pfizer jags; I was just turfed cheerily out after my A-Z ones) The bottom right photo shows how dark it was becoming as I left - it makes the building all look quite cheery, really.

So that's that. I feel hugely relieved - and yes, I know it takes two weeks to be fully effective. I hope Himself will get into next weekend's clinic - there's a dirty rush on. It makes all the stories of low vaccination rates elsewhere seem very alien.

And because it's not bedtime, and because despite feeling slightly deaf I also feel quite euphoric, I shall comment - but only briefly - on that shower in Westminster. How can anyone take them seriously other than as a serious threat to democracy? When will people stop being fooled by the posturing of the entitled? It all seems very distant from what matters, and yet it threatens us all unless we can dispose of them. 

Very alien, in fact. 

PS: The Editor has a piece in today's Scotsman. Page 11, if you're interested ...