Booster jab

[excoriator]

Today I got an email from the NHS asking time to book online for my booster covid jab, only to find that all the vaccination centres I can choose are dotted around Liverpool in places very difficult to get to from the Wirral. Most are impossible without a car and there is no parking at many anyway!

I tried phoning their 'help line' only to be bounced around the menu system for a few minutes before being told (by a recording) that they were far too busy to talk to me before advising me to try some other time and hanging up!

Eventually I booked an appointment in a tent on the Liverpool Pierhead, despite being warned on the map of the danger of 'heavy traffic'. Eventually I realised this actually referred to the Mersey Tunnel which runs directly below the tent.

It's been a bit of a puzzle to me as to why vaccine take-up has been so poor recently, but I am beginning to understand why.

[skylark]

That sounds like bad planning. I had a choice of two accessible from here by public transport; I picked the one I can travel to by bus or train. The train seems the safest if more costly bet - fewer people and more space, and less time sitting among them all,

[excoriator]

I've since found that the policy on the Wirral is for GPs to deliver boosters, so I probably shouldn't be going to Liverpool at all for it. I way well be sent home unjabbed!

If so, I shall be seeking financial compensation for my time. It could be an interesting meeting. I will report back in due course.

[excoriator]

Got my jab despite turning up an hour early. It wasn't in a tent but in what had been a Beatles museum the relics of the band being chucked out somewhere else.

The place was deserted, despite being set up to handle hyndreds if not thousands. I think whilst I was there I saw only another three jabees, at least one of which was a foreign fellow after his second shot. I think he got it.

I spent most of the 15 minutes 'collapse time' you have to wait after your jab chatting with an usher about the Beatles museums in the city. I recall one calling itself the "Beatles Information Centre". A wag at work rang them to ask what John Lennon's had size was! They took him seriously and although they couldn't supply the information promised to get back to him when they'd found out. They may well have done too, but the info never reached me so it remains an unanswered question.

The fellow I chatted to did reveal that take-up had been equally poor in the other vaccination centres in the city too. Whether this is a country wide phenomenon, I have no idea.