Vaccination Covid-19

 I had my first jab on the 11th of March 2021. 

I have to confess that I'm not a fan of annual vaccinations for Flu, and so I was just a bit nervous about getting the Covid jab.

I probably need to clarify that I am not Anti-vaccination in any way. However, I do have a history of adverse reactions to some vaccines. Years ago I worked at London City Airport, on both the land and airside, and in areas where international passengers would be or would have been. This necessitated me having a course of both Tetanus and Hepatitis jabs. 

I had no problem with the jabs in principle, and in truth, I'd had so many Tetanus jabs as a kid I probably didn't need the Tetanus jab. But what the hey it was free? I had the jabs. 

I was floored for a day and bit. I suspect based on previous experience with tetanus, that the issues arose from the Hepatitis jab, but there is no way of knowing. Three jabs over the course of a few weeks and three incidents of feeling as `Fluy' as you can without having the Flu, even with a Piroton chaser, as administered by the Airports in-house GP.

Many years later, I qualified for a free annual Flu jab, my previous experience with the Hepatitis jab was long-forgotten. This was probably a good thing as I went for the Flu jab with no qualms whatsoever. However, the reaction to the Flu jab was 80% of the way to waking up with Flu (if you have actually had Flu you will know what this is like, it's not the sniffles, it's not a cold or a chill. Flu can be a killer and a proper dose of Flu will leave you in doubt whatsoever of it's potential for being lethal). I digress. The effects lasted at least five days and waned a bit each day. However, within a twenty-four hour period, I had gone from being as chipper as a chipper thing with extra chips to being laid out, off sick from work.

The following year I "swerved" the vaccination (that's a colloquial term for ducked my responsibility). The following year, my annual asthma review happened to coincide with the start of the Flu jab season and there was no escape. The nurse practitioner I was seeing just said `well while you're here you may as well have your Flu jab (or words to that effect). The next day I remember going into town for work and bailing out, and coming home mid-morning.

This seasonal Flu jab reaction is my standard. I'm old enough and wise enough now to know, that I need to book the jab for a Friday, ideally in the afternoon, because without a doubt there is going to be some unpleasantness involved. This said the 2020 Flu jab is probably the least bad I've ever had. My arm felt like it was hanging off for a week, but other than that I was fine, 2019 on the other hand was a typical reaction, freezing cold shivering aching hateful affair.

So back to the Covid Jab and my trepidation. 

Noting of any significance to report. If I swing my left arm back to its full extent I can feel the ache in the injection site. No chills, no headache, nothing. Have the jab, and let's get back to as normal as we can and hope that resurgent variants don't undo the fantastic work of scientists, the NHS (all of it), and all the thousands of volunteers making this process best in class.

Advising-individuals-with-allergies-on-their-suitability-for-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine

Relative orbits of the planets

This is one of these things that once you have seen it, you'll think to yourself... `Have I just assumed all the planets do the same thing as Earth just at different speeds around the sun.

Cause of Death

 What I find interesting about this list, is the lack of deaths due to mythical creatures. Clearly, by the 17th Century, Ghosts, Bugaboos, Wyverns, Witches, Werewolves, Vampires, Dragons etc were all extinct.

However, equally interesting is how their once-legendary nefariousness has stuck in the human psyche.

Pot Noodles

Today I had a Pot Noodle, Essentially, I have concluded that the flavour is fairly irrelevant, they all taste of Pot Noodle.

From muscle memory, I deduced that this one tasted pretty much exactly the same as the last one I had (though it was some years ago) and I further concluded that they should probably do away with names of flavours and instead name them after the dominant colours of the pot itself. The one I just had would have been Grey and Red pot.... noodle.

I'm fairly confident that sales would go up and that the management of peoples expectations regarding the `actual' flavour of the contents would allow more people to enjoy them, as their expectations would revolve around the packaging, not the contents... A bit like seeing a tidy bird in block and tackle versus one who is just in the nuddy.

The actual flavour of my Pot Noodle was allegedly Sticky Rib... there is a clue there that you are being sold a dream. Because as far as I can tell, sticky isn't a flavour, it's a sensation related to covalent bonding or van der Waals forces, respectively. However, ribs do taste of something, dependent on the animal they were harvested from, but it isn't Pot Noodle.

I rest my case.

PS: Bombay Bad Boy (a Pot Noodle flavour) sounds like medium-brown dildo. 

PPS: This is an observation on colloquial language related to sex toys, not a racial slur.

History is on repeat.

I recently got involved in a spat with my sons last employer Toolstation in Bridgwater.

In a nutshell, he was asked by his agency to take a new role at Toolstation. It paid more money, and the agency had to provide persons of a certain calibre. So my son was placed based on his ability and suitability, not his availability (he was employed already).

The job at Toolstation lasted one shift of eight hours. The reason, tribalism on the shop floor, a bullying culture operating on the basis of `shared information is a loss of power’. So common, so frequent and I suspect over time that it has sat at the core of a multitude of project failures in every sector in every industry.

I was livid, I don’t think I’ve been so poleaxed by rage in years. I wrote to the CEO of the Travis Perkins group and said the whole incident was unacceptable. I had a brief exchange with his executive assistant, who assured me that the matter would be investigated. A few hours later the head of HR at Toolstation Bridgwater assured me that there would be a full investigation.

Today that same head of HR has contacted me to say that the issues are being accounted for, but he can’t share details, for obvious reasons of employer/employee confidentiality. Fine and reasonable.

Below this, is the moderately edited text of my final email response.

It’s an employers market, as a population we saw exactly the same behaviours play out at the peak fallout from the financial crisis. Workers’ rights were overlooked on the premise that `there are plenty of other people out there looking for work’, minimum wage became the default position in out-of-town locations where low-quality warehousing and single operation manufacturing work forms a great deal of available employment. People lost their value, in exactly the same way as any commodity does when it becomes abundant.

Effectively at the bottom of the food-chain, those scratching around for scraps found they had to fight for them. An erosion of workers rights by default, and by dint of attrition, and with no real conscious input from management. It was and is a grassroots issue that is poorly observed at range. Coming out of the pandemic we are going see exactly the same behaviours again at the shop floor, as people vent their frustration and fear of uncertainty on their subordinates; to fortify their positions and to exert `some control’ over some aspect of their lives in an uncertain world.

It needs to be recognised and mitigated in advance `if you can be nothing else, be kind’, needs to be the maxim moving forward.