SMUGNESS earned me a karmic snotklap this week.
Monday afternoon whizzed by and there was no sign of any effect from my first jab early that day.
“What are all these people on about?” smugness asked. “They all must be wussies.”
No one I knew had anything more than a sore arm, a bit of stiffness, a headache or a day or two of chills. No problemo, even factoring in the immune disorder. What could go wrong?
Smart-ass.
Tuesday was a real wake-up. I sternly told smugness off as it cowered under the bed I dragged myself from to try to go about the day.
That didn’t last long: some Tuesday work chores and my watery eyes were closing and the keyboard looked as inviting as a feather bed. It all hurt. And not since menopause had I felt so icy. Or so hot. Fans on full, then a blankie. And the head: seismic, I tell you.
Now for the bad news: I haven’t gone all magnetic, I don’t have free 5G whooshing out of my head and I do not have erectile dysfunction. Where do these ridiculous rumours start? I mean, before they go viral on social media. It’s absurd.
Fatigue, chills, a sore head. You’ll live, as my mom used to say.
Covid has made big pharma even bigger, and that kind of pees me off. I know they have been R&Ding all these techno/micro/nano things for ages, and it probably cost a bomb. But I’m sure they have more than made that up by now, thanks to the fact that everyone, (that means you too) will eventually have to get jabbed if we want to do anything.
They may intend to or already be funnelling some of that massive money mountain into finding solutions to other health challenges like dementia, cancer, an HIV vaccine. One recently-announced breakthrough is a malaria vaccine.
That’s enormously good news ‒ malaria kills more people than any other organism does. But here’s a little personal challenge: Why can’t they develop something that will actually stop those little blood suckers biting us?
We had an unexpected power outage this week, and I discovered I could happily live in the dark and quiet except for two things: the plug-in anti-mozzie thingy and the fans. (Oh, okay, and the internet and all the chargers. And the fridge).
Anyone watching the house in the dark would have thought there was a crazy person living there. Torchlight jigged and jagged from room to room as I searched for that gross lipsticky thing to paste over hands, feet and legs. None. I lit two stinky, clog-your-throat smoky things and could still hear them whining around my head over the sound of hacking lungs. Even the dogs went to hang out somewhere else in the dark.
Eventually, I found a lurking old bottle of citronella oil that I think you are meant to burn. It went straight on ankles, hands and arms.
The other problem with being left in the dark is, of course, you can’t even put up a fair fight because you can’t see the damn things to klap the little SOBs to a bloody death.
That would have been a really satisfying snotklap.
PS: Go and get vaxxed. You’ll live.
The Independent on Saturday