2021 London
On 7 January 2021 I received an invitation to book my Covid vaccination. I was pleased: this had come sooner than expected. I was less thrilled about the venue: Micham Lane Baptist Church. Where was that? It was certainly not near my GP’s surgery, a convenient 10 minutes’ walk away from my flat. I checked the location in a well-thumbed A-Z. It looked like a relatively straightforward walk. (I don’t have a car and getting there by bus appeared to be rather complicated. In any case I was avoiding public transport as I distanced myself from all possible sources of Covid infection.)
I followed the link provided and was able to select a convenient date: 15 January, and time. I chose mid-afternoon to allow myself plenty of time to get there, have the vaccination and be back before it started to get dark.
On Saturday, two days later, I used my daily afternoon walk to reconnoitre the location. How long would it take to make my way there? The first part of this trek was straightforward and familiar to me. Then as I went further I became rather lost because I was using an ancient A-Z. It took a little while to get back on track. This first outing lasted just over 2 hours, there and back.
Undaunted and having established where I had gone wrong, I made a more successful excursion the following Tuesday. When I reached the church, I was a little perturbed not to see much activity going on there. I thought the vaccination schedule at that location had been due to start the previous day. Was I in the wrong place after all? A more reassuring sight was people moving around inside the church. One of them came out of a door near to where I was standing. I asked him whether this was indeed a Covid vaccination centre. He assured me that it was and that they were busy at that very moment setting things up for this operation. Satisfied that I’d prepared myself as much as possible I retraced my steps with renewed confidence.
On the day of my vaccination, three days later, I took a brisk, untroubled walk back to the church. I arrived early and was able to go in immediately. The event was extremely well organised. A helpful volunteer directed me to the last row of 3 lines of seats. I was handed a form and asked to read and tick the questions about any allergies I had or medical factors that could be a significant contra indication to me having the vaccine. I was also given a leaflet about Covid, the vaccination, and what to expect after I had been given it. When the person in front of me moved up a row I was asked to take her place. Soon I progressed to the first row and was next in line to be vaccinated. A pleasant doctor doubled checked my allergy information, explained what she was about to do and then administered the vaccine. I was handed over to another volunteer who directed me to a seat in a waiting area to rest for 15 minutes to ensure that I had no immediate, adverse reactions. Then I was free to go. I had an pleasant, uneventful walk back home.
1948 Warringon
My walks to an unfamiliar Covid vaccination location revived memories of another in 1948. I had travelled with my mother on a ship from Barbados to England. We were making our way to Egypt to join my father who was in the RAF and stationed there. We had to be vaccinated before we could continue our journey. On arrival in England, we were taken to an RAF station near Warrington.
My mother and I, having just left a tropical island and a large extended family, found ourselves alone in winter in England. She was in a strange, bleak land with a young daughter and no friends or family for support.
I remember very little about the RAF camp or who we met there but I have a vivid memory of that walk. We must have been driven to our appointment at a vaccination centre but my mother had clearly been left to find her way back. It was some distance away from our temporary home in the RAF quarters and, by foot, across unmarked fields.
It was a cold, wet wintry afternoon in the North of England. We got lost and ended up wandering across muddy fields with no idea of the direction of the camp. I held tightly to my mother’s hand. She began to cry. My whole world fell apart. Adults were supposed to sort things out no matter how difficult they seemed to me. That’s how it had always been up to this point. Surrounded by aunts and cousins in Barbados I’d always felt protected and totally secure. Now my mother and I were in this alien place, wandering around in the growing dark and she was alone and crying, bereft of that family support. There was nothing I could do to help her. I don’t remember anything else about the walk. I probably started crying too. That would have steadied her as her whole life was then, and until the day she died, devoted to caring for me. By some miracle we found our way back and afterwards proceeded to Egypt as planned.
That experience has remained deeply etched in my mind. It is one of the few clear memories I have of my childhood.
Two essential vaccinations and two totally different experiences.