An irregular diary of life in a Covid bubble of loveliness

It is a while since I stopped my regular daily blog, mostly as life had, for us, gone back to a kind of ‘new normal’ and I didn’t have too much to say (well, I could have written a party-political broadcast about the UK pretty much every day, but that would have been exhausting…. And boring for anyone reading it..!).  

We have been toing and froing between Spain and the CR on a regular basis (yes, we are two of those people that have been flying regularly, and contrary to what so many people have been saying on the various FB pages that Jan still follows (and rants on) regularly, we have found it very easy and safe.  Frankly, the airports and airlines were much quicker to get into ‘Covid-safe mode' than anywhere else – up until recently, where else could you go where everyone that sets foot inside is wearing a high-quality mask, and has at least been vaccinated or had a test, or, in many cases, had both?!).  I have never understood the paranoia that we have been reading about either flying oneself (I mean in a plane) or the people who DO fly (who many feel are responsible for depositing Covid all over the place).  I beg to differ as neither of those suggestions make sense.

But, anyway, with all of this new variant stuff kicking off, and as we come to the end of our latest visit to Prague before we hunker back down in Spain again, I found myself with so many things that I needed to rant about, that I decided that it is high time I started up a new blog series – maybe not on a daily basis, but as often as I feel the need to get something ‘off my chest’, so to speak (and to those that are not familiar with this expression, it is not what it sounds like).

First of all, one of mine and most people's favourite subjects; vaccines. We spent the early part of 2021 arguing with each other as to when, where and how to get our vaccines. As soon as it was possible for us to get them in the CR, I wanted to whiz back and grab one, but Jan couldn’t see the point, his view being that whilst we were staying in our ‘Covid bubble of loveliness’ we didn’t need to worry, whilst I DID worry as I thought if we didn’t grab them while we could, we might miss out. However, tying in booking a vaccination with getting a flight was difficult (I leave that bit here as I am boring myself already), and in the end we only flew back to Prague in the middle of the summer for both jabs. And even though it was a performance (which I will describe later), and even though neither of us likes needles, or were worried about catching Covid, or anything else really, we were pleased to be able to announce ourselves duly ‘double-jabbed’ (now, of course, I am stressing that all my friends have had their THIRD jab and I won't be able to get mine for another month. Just shows how these things can play with your head).  

On my previous visit to Prague I had one of my regular check-ups with my ‘allergy doctor’ (who is the most fantastic doctor EVER…if you think you are getting allergic to ANYTHING, he will sort it), and he asked me if I had had a reaction to the vaccine, since I am generally allergic to just about everything (husbands included) and he had worried that I might – but I had none.  He himself had an interesting opinion on anti-vaxxers in the Czech Republic, saying ‘in a country which has the highest rate of alcoholism per capita, smokes the most cigarettes, and every time I open the door there is someone asking me to give them a pill prescription for this, that and the other, it is hard to imagine quite how stupid these people are who refuse the vaccine.’  And what a very good point he had.   Which reminds me, nicely, of a video I happened upon the other day (click the link at the top):

https://fb.watch/9LhtUClwgx/

Anyway, back to why I do, occasionally, have an allergic reaction to husbands; our vaccination day.  We had arrived in Prague late the night before, and were up early ready to head to Vinohradska nemocnice for our long-awaited first jab (well, long-awaited by me, anyway.).  Mine was at 11.05 and Jan’s at 11.10.  I suggested that we leave at 10.30, just in case (we are pretty near, but I had read that if you didn’t turn up on time, you could miss your slot).  Jan, however, didn’t feel the same sense of urgency, and our departure was therefore ‘delayed’ due to his late arrival home from running.    In the end, we left at 10.40, 'plenty of time' he said, since 'we would find the vaccination site easily once we got to the hospital grounds'. 

Dressed in shorts, T-shirt and flip flops as it was one of the hottest days of the year, we marched in silence to the tram stop, then to the hospital, and then, of course, we couldn’t actually find the vaccination site at all, since, we found out, it was actually about 2 km away and apparently 'we should go back to the tram stop as it was too far to walk’ – by this time it was 10.55.   Jan, though, felt it would be quicker to walk across the hospital grounds as he now ‘knew’ where to go, so we walked, very fast, until we got to the road where the site was supposedly located.  By this time it was 11.05 and we were in all-out-war mode, not helped when the next person we asked told us that the site was at the end of the road, and the road looked very, very long.  So we started running – in flip flops, shouting at each other all the way - until we arrived at the site, saw a great long queue which we jumped, found an  administrator, Jan turned on the ‘charm’, and we swept in to one of the kiosks ‘just’ fifteen minutes late.   By that time we were soaked in sweat and my heart was racing to the point that I thought I could be the first person to die BEFORE having the vaccine.  But all was OK – the only blip was when Jan stopped the nurse just before his jab in order for him to have his photo taken – she was so irritated that she banged the needle in when he wasn’t looking and then had to act as if she was doing it again for the sake of the camera.  

I suspect that that is just about all that anyone will want to hear about vaccinations, so will leave it at that for now (even though I could keep it going by talking about our second vaccine. I know. You would think that that would have gone smoothly. Haha.)  So here we are, coming to the end of another trip to Prague, and wondering if our double-vaxxed status has been enough to keep us from catching the ‘new variant’.  I say that in inverted commas as (a) all the guff I have been reading (and I have been reading A LOT, since there is not always so much else to do!) has said that all viruses develop new variants all the time, and (b) my friends in South Africa tell me that their information is that this ‘new variant’ has, so far, proved to be very mild and that, in fact, it could be a good thing – in viruses, apparently, one variant kills off another, so this mild one might very well kill off the former less mild one, if you see what I mean. 

And that makes me wonder.  Could this ‘new variant’ have actually been a useful excuse for the snollygosters in the UK (just using the UK as an example, of course…. 😊 - there are others too) to slam all the doors shut again (having told everyone that the UK is managing the virus so much better than everyone else in Europe (very funny, even though the case numbers have been very high for some time now)).  So much easier to say that all the new restrictions are due to 'the new variant' than to admit that, yet again, they have ignored all the advice and pretended that everything was back to normal.  When it clearly wasn’t.  A bit like saying that a party wasn't a party when it clearly was... but I wont start on that....!

I am conscious that this is going on a bit and if you have made it this far you may be losing the will to live. I will just say though that it has been lovely to be back in Prague for a while... but, really, how much more of this can some of these countries take? We had lunch in our favourite restaurant today - the beautiful Zatisi - a couple of weeks before Christmas and empty. We walked across the Old Town Square - gorgeous in the minus five temperature (and blimey, I haven't been this cold for more than two years now!) - but no Christmas market and no tourists. We bought some trinkets in one of my favourite shops, already giving 70% off as no-one is shopping there. It makes me MADDDDD. So if you are one of the anti-vaxxers and you are reading this (assuming you can read) watch the video again, and go and get a bloody jab. It's on you.