Just for once, can we all finally show some collective responsibility here please.
Resilient residents, while you wait with bated breath to find out if we are limping into another long, lonely, Lockdown, with Christmas cancelled at two minutes notice, go get that jab.
I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not ecstatic about being stabbed with a needle every six months, especially after two previous pricks that left me feeling like I’d been bashed by a bus.
But in my view, the vaccine – booster and otherwise, is our awesome opportunity to snatch back that, largely lush, life most of us were living before we were thrust into these queer quarantines, that are quite frankly, brutal.
The loss of lives and livelihoods, the dire disruption of our kids’ education, the massive mental health explosion, the care home crisis, the missed medical diagnoses, and the absolute absence of any sort of social scene – apart from periodic pub trips, and Saturday supermarket shopping. What a nightmare.
I believe that it’s all about balancing the tangible Covid-19 threat, against the deep disruption it causes to our educational, medical, and social fabric – a state of play that has been deeply divisive for us a country, and as a nation.
So for me, if an easily effective, super safe vaccine with an extremely rare risk of any sort of side effects comes along to blitz the bleak and barren backdrop of the queer quarantine, then what’s not to love.
Look likely, I’ll have to cancel my original Christmas, juggle the baubles to try to have some sort of celebration, and do a swift supermarket sweep to stock up on those sweet Snowballs and cheeky Chocolate logs.
I will get on with it for the greater good whilst muttering madly under my breath, and I am sure that most of us will do the same.
It’s perfectly plausible to comply with the cruel Corona rules, whilst also finding them deeply devastating from a personal point of view.
I’ll still hotfoot it to Holm View with the big Booster letter, whilst silently seething about having to have yet another vaccine, and slightly scared of those awful after-effects that may still knock me for six.
Please go get jabbed, roll with the rules, keep your happy household small, and spare a thought for those struggling with the chaos.
Happy Coronacoaster Christmas and a pandemic peaceful New Year.
What do you think.
Mrs SVJ
The Voice of Our Community
Sue Vincent-Jones, blogging as Mrs SVJ, is a Barry born journalist, editor, and activist. She writes about Barry – and her life in the wider world, through the eyes of a, quirky and queer, local girl done good.
Written exclusively for the Vale’s newest newspaper, and digital platform, The Glamorgan Star, her latest ‘Passing Comment’ column, an addition to the infamous Sue’s Views collection, can be found here.
Mrs SVJ, Barry’s Boldest Blogger, can be contacted here.