Get that arm ready!

 

 

 

Yet another case of not what you know but who you know. 

     This is in relation to getting the jab against Covid-19.  I am now in one of the groups that has been “called” to make an appointment to bet the jab, however when I got onto the appropriate page on the web, I discovered that all the “massive” vaccination centres were way outside my town.  I also know that my local CAP is a vaccination centre, but that didn’t figure in the list that I was able to access.

    On asking a swimming friend if he had been vaccinated and evincing some surprise when he answered in the affirmative, I was encouraged to ignore the web site that I had been directed towards and go instead to a telephone number for the Generalitat and “let them sort it all out”.

     As this was the first working day since his advice I, with Toni’s help, have done as he suggested and I have been assured that I will be contacted “today” with details of the centre that I can access.  I have faith that they will do as they say.  I can be touchingly innocent sometimes!  But we will see.

 

The weather, which has been particularly bloody for over a month, is generally better today, with the sun doing its best to convince doubters that the month is actually May and not November.

     I mark the start of Real Summer with my first immersion in the communal pool.  Although the young Viral Assassins of next door have thrown themselves into the glacial waters on a number of occasions, I do not think that authentic humans will follow them for some time – bearing in mind that there has to be hot weather for a week or so to allow the body of water in our pool to heat up a little and lose its more heart failure inducing qualities. 

     I am still uncertain about our foray to Terrassa the day after tomorrow for the first Family Occasion for over a year – the first time that the two of us will have been outside our area and visiting other people.

     This is a foretaste of the freedom (or should that be “freedom”) that will develop over the next few months.  I do share a desire to get back to normality, but

 

 

-       -   Dramatic break   -

 

Just had a telephone call and now have an appointment for 3pm on Saturday to have my first injection.  It is not here in Castelldefels, but in a Massive Vaccination Centre in Cornellà, which is one of the places that I passed through day after day when I was teaching in Barcelona.  It is now a case of finding out exactly where the centre is and being prepared to Make A Day Of It, to celebrate the start of my protection against Covid!

 

-       -   Dramatic break   -

 

No sooner had we had lunch than there was a phone call from my local CAP asking if I wanted to have the jab and could I make it to the CAP within 30 minutes.  Hysterically saying, “YES!” to everything, I got on my bike and sped off.

     Although I had thoughtfully brought my collapsible shooting stick with me, I had no time to use it as I was ushered, immediately I arrived in the CAP, into a deserted injection room and, barely had I got one arm out of my coat and my T-shirt rolled up, than a doctor appeared and I had the shot post haste.

     To my utter delight (apart from having the shot) it turned out that the vaccine that I had been given was the Johnson & Johnson Jenssen Jab – a single dose vaccine!  I’m done!

 

 

     Putting all the circumstances together: time; deserted rooms; instant reception; speed of delivery – it seems fairly clear that the telephone call I had was one that was part of a procedure to try and ensure that all available doses were used.  I suspect that my “instant” vaccination was using up an end-of-surgery dose: either it went into my arm or the bin. 

     But I don’t care.  I have, at long last, been vaccinated and I can now start counting the days to optimum protection – which is about a month. 

     And I don’t have the inconvenience of finding time for a second jab! 

     Hooray!

 

 

Baby steps to almost safety!

 

Well, it’s a step forward.

     Today I had an SMS from the health authorities informing me that I am part of one of the groups called to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and urging me to request my appointment to get vaccinated.  Which I of course did, except (isn’t there always an ‘except’?) in all the centres that I selected I was told that there were no appointments available.

     So.  How am I supposed to take this? 

     I have previously been told that I will be ‘called up’ in exactly the same way that I have been when I get my winter flu jab in, or under the supervision of my local CAP (Health Centre), through the receipt of an SMS.  Perhaps this pro-active approach is just to keep us quiet as we try (and fail) to get an appointment, but to make us think that “at least we are on the system, and that is a good first step, eh?”

     Let it pass that ALL my friends of a similar age in the UK (and those a damn sight younger) have ALL had their first jabs, and I do not even have a firm date for my vaccination. 

     Still, the centres’ vaccine availability is updated weekly, so first thing on Monday morning (after my swim and cup of tea) I will be re-entering all my information to try my luck at another round of Vaccine Jackpot!

     In a nice reversal of blame, it now becomes my fault that I have not been vaccinated, as the onus has been placed on me to find a centre.  To be fair, I have only tried those centres that are within a reasonable (however you define that word in relation to a pandemic) distance from my home.  And you could always argue that were I to be truly serious about getting vaccinated, then I wouldn’t be so parochial and I would willingly venture into parts of Catalonia that I have only heretofore seen on maps!

     Or I could wait for my CAP to call me.  I think that will allow another week of querulous prevarication!

     And at least I am on the system, and that has to be positive, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

While I had my swim (and cup of tea) Toni was able to meet up with his sisters and his two nephews.  This meeting took place at our almost-local Outlet, full of logo heavy shops selling still overpriced items to an ever-credulous public.  In which of course I place myself.  But, as I was occupied in ploughing my watery way up and down the 25-metre lane of the swimming pool, I was unable to join them.

     I am not averse to visiting the Outlet, in spite of the fact that it does not have a Wedgewood Shop – but, there again, where does nowadays – where I can vicariously indulge my mother-inspired love of china, glass and cutlery.  But there are limits to the shopping masochism to which I will willingly lend myself: to go to an Outlet with one determined woman shopper might be regarded as foolhardy, to go with two smacks of the sort of extremism that destroys empires!  And two adolescent boys! 

     Anyway, I didn’t go and given my lack of a vaccine (see above) I am sort-of relieved.  Both the boys and their mother have had Covid – and I’m not sure if that makes them more or less worrying for an unvaccinated person.  As with so many impulses during this pandemic, isolationism and a sturdy stance of anti-society isolationism is the better bet!

     But we have now had more than a year where the normal interaction in the family has been stopped, the celebrations of Name Days and Birthdays have been via Zoom and, I have to admit, thoroughly unsatisfactory.  The joint visits to the beach have not taken place during the last summer and, given the rate of vaccination in Catalonia it looks more than likely that they will not take place during this summer (when we finally get to it) as well.

     Spain has said that they are thinking of delaying the second jab follow up to the AZ vaccine to 16 weeks after the first jab: that means 4 months.  Given that tomorrow is May Day, that means that given the delay and the time necessary for the two jabs to come to full strength, it is going to be well into September until this tranche of people is fully vaccinated. 

     I am in Group 5C and it is only today that I had the invitation (not an appointment) to try for the vaccine – so, if I had the injection tomorrow on May Day, it would the beginning of August before I was fully vaccinated.  And I am not getting the vaccine tomorrow!

     The projected timetable for full (70%) vaccination for herd immunity here in Catalonia looks ever more optimistic!  And are we seriously going to be welcoming tourists into our Covid hot spots during the summer?   

     Commerce is driving out sense!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What time of the year is it?

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is trying its best not to be.  There is a forced quality about any celebratory approach to the time that makes it all the more unreal.

     I have not, physically in a hands-on sense, bought any presents – apart of course from my ruinously expensive office chair, and with only a deposit paid and its not being available until January, I’m not sure that it counts.  So, the Family’s presents have virtually all been bought and sent via Amazon; the Christmas cards will be (with few exceptions) virtual via email with a donation to Oxfam; the Christmas meal will be just the two of us with a possible Zoom element making everything just that little bit more embarrassing and uneasy!

     Happy Covid Christmas and a Vaccinated New Year!

     Of course, the best Christmas present this year is being around to be able to moan about the limitations of the festivities: there are plenty of Catalans and Welsh people who are unable to do so, and unless our respective governments approach the pandemic with something that is more appreciative about the risks involved, then potentially, hundreds of thousands more will die in the cause of political window dressing.

     We have been told that half a million people in the UK have had the first dose of the vaccine.  It’s a small start given the population, but at least it is something.  Spain, together with the rest of the EU are not going to start the programme of vaccination until the 27^th of December so lord alone knows when the programme will finally get to us in Castelldefels.

     A friend in Istanbul wrote that he looked forward to travelling more freely by April.  I think he is being charmingly optimistic.  I do not think that there will be anything like free movement until the end of the summer next year, and in my mind I have virtually written off 2021 as a sort of year in abeyance.  I think that 2022 will be the year in which things generally get back to normal, or what we will have accepted as normal by then.

 

 

 

I sense a real weariness about the restrictions from a lot of people that I see around me, and that quality of being fed up expresses its visible self in the laxity of many with the wearing of masks.  In the centre of town people are generally (and legally) obliged to wear the masks and they do, but on the paseo and the nearer you get to the sand, the slacker the attitude is.  To my mind, it doesn’t really matter if you are walking, running, dog walking, skateboarding, skating or whatever: you should wear a mask.  I find the allowance made for smokers to wander about in peopled spaces without a mask because of their addiction to be frankly astonishing.  Where is the logic in energetic exercise where the individual sweats and breathes more deeply and expels air more forcibly being exempt from mask wearing?  It simply doesn’t make sense.  At least to me.  And to logic!

     Johnson is coming under pressure to impose another strict lockdown.  It is not something than anyone wants, but it is surely necessary to prevent horrendous loss of life. 

     I was going to say that there is nothing special about Christmas – and I could defend that statement theologically, socially, numerically, historically, culturally with lots of other -ly words thrown into the debate – but clearly the Day itself is, not only in Christian terms but also in Family terms significant.  People want to be together.  People want to be with their families.  That is easily understandable.  But, with a vaccine being rolled out throughout Europe in a few days’ time, even if individual know that they are not going to be in the first tranche of vaccinations, they will know that within months they will start to gain the protection that they need to visit their loved ones and, more importantly, not kill them by visiting.

     It is asking a lot for people to be patient month after month and to see blatant unfairness, incompetence, corruption, lying and deceit – but the vaccines exist and, in time they will be given to everyone and we will then all have a degree of protection that will allow life as we knew it to become life as we know it.  And for the restrictions to become a way of life or a bitter memory.

 

We went out for lunch today and ate inside the restaurant at spaced tables.  When we go to restaurants Toni remembers to bring the bottle of soapless alcohol handwash and I remember to bring the pepper grinder.  Nowadays communal cruets are a thing of the past and oil and vinegar come in one-use little individual bottles; ketchup and mayonnaise are in sachets and salt and pepper are in little paper containers.  Pepper is the problem: while salt is always there, pepper is a wayward addition and I cannot rely on its availability, so I take my own.

     A couple of times in the past I have had to rescue my pepper mill from clearing waiters’ hands and remind them that does not belong to them – but nowadays the appearance of my own condiment raises no eyebrows!

 

So, Johnson has had to U-turn on yet another of his empty reassurances and Christmas had had to be to all intents and purposes cancelled.  We are not in such a Draconian lockdown in Catalonia, but I do not think for a moment that things are going to get better during the holiday period.  We are all waiting for the vaccine.

Tomorrow is our final shop for Christmas.  We still have not finally settled what it is we want to eat during our Christmas meal – but it is certainly not going to be turkey with all the trimmings!  Toni has suggested prawns and that seems like something with which I can work, especially as I intend to have salmon scrambled eggs to start off Christmas Day in the right style!  Alas!  I will not be having a glass of Cava to accompany it.  How many YEARS is it since I last had an alcoholic drink!  I don’t miss it.  Much.  Though there are a few times with a good meal when a glass of decent red would go down a treat.  According to my doctor I am “allowed” one small glass of red wine a day.  It just simply does not sound like me.  So, I am prepared to do without.  And I make do with non-alcoholic beer.  Which, to be fair, is much better than it was when I first tried it years ago!  Even if it is really larger and not real bitter beer.

     Still, the Christmas Meal will look good and I have bought a few little things to make the festive board look appetizing!

     We will see how it goes and we will certainly take a photograph to remind us of the end of a truly awful year!