Jabber Ranks

The line is round the block at the SSE Arena, Belfast. Its not just around the block either - it curls back on itself several times. For the last two weeks, since the SSE opened its doors to vaccination, Susan has been working there, and people with appointments have been just strolling in. 

When I finally managed to get an appointment at the venue - something I was only able to do on my fiftieth birthday - I thought I'd play it safe. It was a brand new system in a brand new venue, so I thought I'd give it two weeks - they'd have plenty of time to iron out the wrinkles by then. 

"Next!"

The day before my due date they opened up the appointments to the forty year olds and all hell broke loose. 

We are coiling round the courtyard in the rain, in ever decreasing circles. I feel like I'm in a Gulag, trudging around the yard on a prison detail (I'm not - I'm queuing to get some medicine). The endless stream of people twists over the forecourt like a Celtic design on some Ogham inlaid torq. From above it probably looks like some cool Busby Berkeley shit - I should have brought my large feathered fan. 

There's a hailstorm. 

At the hour mark I'm still not inside the building. 

Brilliant sunshine. 

The queue is quite young. Susan tells me most of the people she talked to yesterday were teachers or people who really wanted to go on holiday. I don't think there are many teachers here today. The last time I saw a crowd like this at the SSE I was reviewing "Top Gear" live. These are the same people who caused mile long tailbacks when McDonald's opened a new drive-thru. They're early adapters: they camp out for new Apple phones. And they really need a holiday. That would solve everyone of their problems. 

Of course, I'm glad they're getting the jab. I think everyone should get the jab. I just wish there weren't a thousand of them standing between me and the needle. 

I queued for so long Prince Phillip died. 

Raining now. 

I'm knackered, there is a crying child in front of me and I need a piss. It is actually just like going on holiday. They should take some solace from this. 

People are not wearing masks even in the queue to get vaccinated. That is taking being a dick right up to the grille. They each have that "challenge me" smirk, beloved of maskless blokes with a twelve pack of Coors under one arm in the Co Op. They go unchallenged.

"Maybe they have underlying health problems, John". 

Sure, with calf tattoos and a bomber jacket with the words "Personal Trailer" emblazoned on the back. They don't look like they'd be coughing blood into a hankie in a Merchant Ivory film.  

And I'm inside the building! And the first song I hear over the P.A. is "Poison Arrow" by ABC. Think it through, lads. "Coming up next: The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young and Crazy Horse..."

And then I take a step back from all this, and think how remarkable it is that we are here, and this is happening: I'm in a sports centre, voluntarily wearing a face mask and waiting, alongside thousands of others, to be injected with a vaccine by military personnel. This is an extraordinary moment in my life and its so mundane. I'm tired and I can taste toothpaste. There are a couple in front of me with matching golf umbrellas. People break from the queue to use the toilet - they ask others to save their places. The bloke in front' is tall and balding. The woman in the blue queue next to me is wearing a Welsh Tapestry Coat, which surprises me, as they're hard to come by. The murmur of conversation, the lack of panic, the order, the ordinariness. 

A paranoid hippy would have a field day looking in on this, as we wait patiently inline for Bill Gate's nanobot cordial. Its the sort of environment where you expect to see an armed man separate a crying mother from her children, or an old man taken out and shot by the perimeter fence. It has an orange pajamas, children in cages sort of vibe. And yet we're on our phones, scratching our arses, making friends in the queue. We are the definition of sheeple - the farmer doesn't even need a dog. What sort of a dystopia has matching golf umbrellas? 

It's an anti-climax. Of course it is. It's the Wanda-vision of state-sanctioned mass immunisations. It's just an injection, one of hundreds I've had in my lifetime, delivered courteously and professionally by well trained staff: a cocky, cheerful boy from the North of England, whom I take to be a soldier, and a kind-eyed Irish nurse. I am mildly disorientated by the alienating weirdness of it all: the bright lights, the scratched, refracting perspex sheeting, the feeling you're in some sort of internment camp. The fact that "Step On" by Happy Mondays is playing.

I do what I always do when cornered in an awkward situation: I start trying to solicit laughs from the pair, a strategy that has, as of yet, never once paid off. And my strike rate remains a hundred per cent, as they attempt to relay important information and stab me in the arm, and I breathlessly tumble through some shtick. Eventually I relax my left arm for long enough for him to stick a needle in it, and I'm advised that if I get a headache that lasts longer than four days I should go to the doctor. They tell me I need to go to a holding pen, and give me a piece of paper telling me what time it will have to be before I can go to the checking-out desk. 

A young woman wipes down a seat for me in the waiting room. Everyone is slick and cheerful and incredibly competent. I'm quite moved by the size of the operation. And this is just one place. All over the country decent, talented, infinitely patient people are doing this, so our lives will one day take on some semblance of normality. I'm quite moved again as I sit here typing this. 

So far there no side-effects. My arm isn't even sore. I'm tired but then I'm always tired. My friend Emma had the jab yesterday and she's feeling rough as guts today, so I probably have it all to look forward to, but so far the only thing out of the ordinary is that I've been playing Elton John's "Song for Guy" on repeat all afternoon. 

"Life...isn't everything...isn't everything..."