A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
In a local church hall we wait, with fellow
ancients, for our first Pfizer vaccination.
Ours is a generation that has received,
since childhood, the blessings of technology
and science. Though the glitter ball
is stationary and the stage curtains drawn
there are shades still of dancing and pantomimes –
and, in the observation tent outside,
the fifteen minutes is quite jolly,
definitely determined. We humans are
social animals, prone to good causes.
We drive home in warm, tawny sunlight.
“A lovely day!” you say. “Please sing the song!”
I urge, and you do. ‘This is my lovely day.
This is the day I shall remember
the day I’m dying…’ And, tearful, I see you,
in the chorus, when we were students,
more than half a century ago.
Mary Clark
February 26, 2021Comedy and joy and sadness too when we get our vaccines. I’m glad you’ve had yours. Mine was postponed but coming up in March now. I’ve heard some people cry after they’ve had the shot. But singing makes more sense, if we can make sense of all this.
Ferne Braudel
February 28, 2021You do have a tendency to merge naive and sentimental poetry. The comparative credibility between having a Pfizer jab and the nostalgic re-imagining of your wife as a Vaudeville chorus girl is somewhat discordant and overstated. Have vaccinations always had this effect on you?
David Selzer
February 28, 2021Not normally, no! Are you, by any chance, related to the French historian, Fernand Bradel?
Ferne Braudel
March 1, 2021Only illegitimately.
Tim Davenport
March 2, 2021Echoes of BIRTHDAY GIRL… – ‘We are an innovative species…and stoical’.
Jeff Teasdale
March 10, 2021Will we be saying “do you remember the day you got your jab?” in years to come? The day when political spin was actually eclipsed by good people and ‘experts’ and the curtain from behind which we have been peering for months, opened a little wider. Not a village hall in our case, but our local pharmacy in Macclesfield, where ‘Andrew’ has always been several steps ahead. His pharmacy was once the rough estate pub, with a huge black barking dog patrolling its flat roof. Four vaccination stations, mine in one of the clean white back rooms which, as a pub, one could only guess what previously happened in there. “Wow, this is nice, Andrew!” ..”Thanks. Did you ever come in here when it was a pub?” … “Only the once” … “Me too…”…… Thanks, David, for reminding us that the rest of our lives are a little closer.