DEMENTIA CARE: THE VACCINATION GAME.

Daycare phones up almost every week. Not this week. There’s a holiday. I’m phoned regularly to tell me nothing much is happening. This week I believe nothing much is happening, even though I am not going to be phoned. We are advancing to the stage of having loads of clients vaccinated. But that’s just the start of the beginning of the first bit.
   A survey a wee while back gave me an indication of what would happen. Gradual opening up. Everyone vaccinated. Fewer punters on the bus out to the place. And only one visit a week, to stagger the crowds. Manage the stampede.
   As for the jab, I played the game of Vaccine Ikea, and wound or wended around the improvised medical centre…to be asked if I might be pregnant. That would’ve been news to me and to medical science. The first dose floored me.
   Recent replay, but in the rain. Second dose. Same Ikea path, winding through the same route. A masked assistant made sure I didn’t wander off through a door behind me, but I explained that this was my second visit and all was well.
   She explained that first-timers often disappeared into back rooms and areas out-of-bounds if no one was there to provide guidance. It’s a busy place, and, for a few seconds at a time, all the official people can vanish. They pop up, gopher-like, in search of the wayward.
   Presumably, those lost souls didn’t bother looking at the ground to see the woodland trail of circles six feet/two metres apart. I followed the yellow dot road, both times.
   This time around, I wasn’t asked about the pregnancy. A great deal of emphasis went into assuring me that I’d be receiving the second half of the same vaccine. In short order, a masked assistant asked me what I did. I was a carer, and this would open up a lot of things for me. This was a good thing.
   Distantly, I noted a masked warrior in the battle against disease. He dusted down the chair with spray and a determined non-look. The light turned green. I threw myself out of the aircraft and waited for the parachute to kick in.
   You are always thanked for turning up and taking the vaccine. Especially the second part. My introductory letter came with a printout for four bus tickets, in case I needed to use multiple buses to reach the centre.
   I’d made alternative arrangements, but it was nice to see that level of detail. They really want you to have that second dose of the two-part fix. I was in and out so quickly that the notoriously fickle Scottish weather didn’t even have time to change. Rain on the way in and rain on the way out.
   That was that. The car took me through rainy streets. Crowded streets. I spotted a massive gathering of three masked people, all walking in the same direction. The last time I stood in a gathering like that, we were spaced at decent intervals. I picked up pills. Even the pills aren’t picked up now. We switched to delivery.
   Haven’t been to the cinema since 2019. There is no dentist, save for emergencies – and I imagine even in those situations there are queues. We play the Vaccination Game. Guerrilla tactics, with needles.
   Avoid contact with the enemy. Limit the enemy’s ability to move. Buy time. Build support in the populace. Support being vaccination, in this case. Deny the enemy land in which to operate. Give your foe nowhere to go.
   We’ve been bad at this. Without the internet, we’d have been far worse off. We were prepared for this. And let the preparations slip through trembling fingers. If all we’ve learned is how to avoid fucking it up next time, then we’ve learned how to avoid fucking it up next time.
   The game of vaccines, uptake of vaccines, and crucial uptake of second doses, is a game with the highest stakes. The explosions in this war were of statistics. Hospitals, buckling. Frustrated medical people going home from another hard shift, only to find they couldn’t pick up any toilet roll as they shopped.
   Yes, the toilet roll thing jumps out at me a year on. How many hoarders still have pallets of toilet paper left? Supermarkets shouldn’t have sold to hoarders, of course, but the deluded hoarder will spend time going from shop to shop, or have the whole family scatter and grab a packet each.
   I note, with bewilderment, that my computer accepts hoarders as a word but not hoarder. No one was vaccinated when the great toilet roll plunder began. Of course not. No one could be vaccinated at that time. It’s astonishing to realise there’s a vaccine now, thrown into production so quickly.
   On my last trip to the pharmacy, before I switched to delivery, I wore my mask just around the corner from the place. As I crossed from one road to another, an unmasked individual walked by and grumbled something to himself.
   Very privately, I hoped the fucker died of Covid. He was complaining about my mask. But not directly to me. Very importantly, to himself. I let it slide. If he’d had the guts to say something directly, I’d have politely called him all the rude names and pointed out, you fucker, that you can’t get into the pharmacy without a mask, you arsehole.
   That’s edited, to spare blushes. It’s a shame his mother spat instead of swallowed. We’d have avoided the non-interaction these many years later.
   Ultimately, yes, I am reminded that there are people out in the world who don’t want the vaccine. Some of them don’t want you to have the vaccine either. I shielded for a year so those shit-stains could drink my piss.
   That’s as detailed as we need to be.
   Question. Do I now go utterly fucking mad and run around town as if all is restored? Of course not. I am the carer. But the cared-for is a week or two behind me on the list. Even after vaccination, we wait two weeks to be sure.
   And even after two weeks, we can still catch the disease. It just won’t disintegrate us. One of the problems of shielding is that everything is shunted online. And that means you buy more parcels.
   I’ll have a backlog of incoming parcels to deal with. Technically, that ties me to the house for a short while. Now we start asking serious questions. What went online that should stay online? Do we keep certain things the way they’ve been, rather than return to the way things were…
   Online shopping was a carer thing anyway. Everyone jumped on that overloaded bandwagon. We were kicked out of the system until the system gave us priority. Well, we still have priority. And we’re keeping those advanced bookings.
   The only change now is that the earliest slot in the day is always automatically booked solid. People want their shopping in before they go to work. Speaking of work. As a carer, I work from home.
   What of those who worked from a building who switched over to working at home? Will they all go back in?
   We can’t go daft after vaccination. I post letters at midnight. This is a carer tactic. No one is on the streets. I won’t miss a parcel delivery or a medical professional. And I won’t be telephoned while I am out and about.
   No one bugs me at midnight. It’s the easiest time to post the few letters that I must still send away. Covid came in and made that routine even more vital. The disease added a scary layer to a convenient plan.
   Yes, I’ll hardly post any letters. And I have no reason to change my way of posting those letters. I may take the service up on the offer of picking up parcels from my home for delivery. The Post Office keeps closing, meaning my nearest Post Office is no longer something I can call nearest. I’ve been holding off sending parcels. It’s high-time I sent those out – I need the space.
   Okay. Vaccinated, I could trudge to town and use the facilities there. And I’d gain exercise from that. It’s been so long since I’ve been on a bus that I couldn’t tell you the fare. Something tells me they’ll want me to use a contactless card – which I have. I’ve never been a fan of loose change. It eats at pockets.
   I’m not inclined to use a bus. Not when I can walk it. Exercise. See how crowded the streets are. How many people are wearing masks? Are the roads filled with trees? Our apocalyptic future is the one with toilet roll being rationed.
   Okay. The vaccine opens things. Slowly, though. And that’s right and proper. At least the second dose never went after me. That’s something. How long before they decide we need a booster shot? Oh, they’ve planned that stuff already. That, too, lurking in the future, is part of the Vaccination Game. Play to win.