It has been a very mixed day (106/365)

[white_hart]

This morning started off grumpily, not so much about the continuing impossibility of booking a vaccine appointment nearer than Milton Keynes as about the fact that when I posted on Facebook asking if anyone else was getting the same error message I was getting saying that I had missed my first appointment lots of people commented to say I really should take the time to go to Milton Keynes rather than waiting for a nearer appointment.

I stayed grumpy all morning (despite ordering a new pen to distract myself), but a swim at lunchtime calmed me down (and thanks to the time tracking spreadsheet I've made myself, I knew I didn't have to feel guilty about taking the time, because I was still on track to clock in at about 44 hours this week. For my next trick, I should try working on not feeling that I need to be working 44 hours per week anyway).

I settled back to work after knitting, picked up my phone for a brief brain break after a meeting and discovered that a knitting friend of mine died very suddenly on Monday night. While we mostly knew each other online, through Ravelry and then Twitter, we'd met in person several times, at knitting shows and group meet-ups and when one of us happened to find herself in the same place as the other one. She was an incredibly generous person, and there are lots of cards on my pinboards that she sent me with various things - some fibre she'd carded when I first got my spinning wheel, a set of buttons that she thought might work when I mentioned that I'd bought a jacket which had horrible buttons and I wanted to change them - and I will really miss her presence on Twitter.

An hour later, an email of the kind that you would really rather never get, but definitely don't want to get at ten to five on a Friday afternoon, popped into my inbox, and I spent the next hour making calls to get more information and alert various people who needed to know what was going on.

And then, after I'd given up on attempting to get the business case I'd hoped to finish writing done and logged off for the day, I spotted a friend mentioning on Twitter that she'd just booked her vaccine in Oxford, tried the site for the nth time since Tuesday and discovered that I could get appointments any time next week, so I've booked my first jab for next Friday and my second for July, and am very glad I didn't just book Milton Keynes instead.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I'm so sorry for your loss. How incredibly sad.

[white_hart]

Thank you. It is very sad; she was only 53, and it was completely unexpected.

[mountainkiss]

Absolutely awful. Am so so sorry.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend.

[white_hart]

Thank you.

[jinty]

Good stuff about the jab: some
very mixed stuff elsewhere in the day; devastating about your friend (have also read N Whyte’s LJ post).

[white_hart]

Yes; while I realise that Nicholas Knows Everyone, that was one of the odder intersections as I knew her through knitting and not fandom.

[nineveh_uk]

I am glad that you have managed to get an Oxford jab (and I can't think that driving back an hour from MK after having a vaccine is a brilliant idea road safety-wise TBH), but I'm not sure that that and swimming really makes up for a rotten day. I'm very sorry about your knitting friend, that must have been quite a shock, and very sad.

[white_hart]

No, as days go it was pretty bad. And yes, it was a huge shock about my friend. She was only 53 and it was completely unexpected.

[muninnhuginn]

Congratulations on getting the local vaccine appointment. Seems so stupid to have to travel too far when there are so many to be provided.
And that sudden, too young death is tragic. So sad. I knew her through Ravelry where I'll miss her Tour de Fleece. (She was the year below me at my Cambridge college too.)

[white_hart]

Her Tour de Fleece posts were wonderful. Absolutely my favourite thing about the Tour!

[cybik]

I'm so sorry about your friend. How utterly horrible.

It sounds like quite an intense day all in all. I'm glad you've got your vaccine booked, though.

Lots of love.

[white_hart]

Thank you. Yes, I am very pleased to have the vaccine booked.

[callmemadam]

What a horrible shock about your friend; I'm so sorry.

One hears such ridiculous stories about vaccine appointments. Just one example: one of my cousins lives in Surrey and was offered an appointment in North London! I was lucky enough to be phoned by my surgery and given both appointments together. Not so lucky in that although local, it's a way to go. Second one in May.

[white_hart]

I think there's a lack of clarity about how the online booking system works, and a lot of people think they have to take what's available when they log on rather than waiting for more appointments to be released.

T got his via our GP practice, but I don't think they're offering appointments to under-50s yet as they're concentrating on second jabs.

[cmcmck]

Glad to hear it.

Some regions do appear to be making a real fist of this.

We get our second next week and all we have to do is to walk to the local surgery, ten minutes away!

[white_hart]

I think there's a lack of connection between the online booking (which is for the special vaccination centres) and the GP surgeries which are also offering vaccinations, and not everything shows on the online system so sometimes it looks as though the only available appointments are a long way away.

[mrs_redboots]

Left hands never seem to know what right hands are doing - I had a text from my GP surgery asking me to book, which I duly did and received the vaccine at the nearest health centre (3 minutes walk!); then I had a text from a local hospital, where I am nominally under a consultant's care, which I was told by a nurse friend to ignore if they hadn't given me a specific appointment (which they hadn't), and then a few days later the hospital telephoned me to ask if I wanted the jab, so I explained I'd already had it under the GP, so they said they'd take my name of the list.... reminds me of when I went to the chemist in December to pick up my medication, and the pharmacist asked whether I'd had my flu jab - which, again, I'd had via the practice!

Sorry about your friend; that sucks.

[white_hart]

Yes, I think they're just trying to make sure everyone gets covered one way or another. And possibly taking the view that it's easier to ask multiple times than get consent to share people's data between streams.

[antisoppist]

I am sorry about your friend. That is shit.

I've been confused by people booking second jabs along with first ones because I just got told "we'll text you in June" re. my second but presumably that is because mine's via the GP. Certainly distance to vaccination centres was an issue here and you basically can't get vaccinated unless someone can drive you. Even the GP ones are via a GP hub that the surgery is very proud of being involved in but the location is 9 miles away, which isn't far really but there is no bus service in that direction any more.

[white_hart]

I think the GP surgeries are calling people for their first and second jabs separately, but the website booking service gets you to book both at once.

T had his via our surgery, but I still had to drive him as they are also part of a group and were doing jabs at the village hall in Islip, presumably because it's bigger. (It would be theoretically possible by public transport, as it is on the railway line, though I don't think many trains stop there. It would also have been possible to walk - about 3.5 miles each way - but as I could drive him that made more sense.)

[ankaret]

Yes, I was firmly directed to book both of mine at the same time when I was booking via the website. My GP surgery is within easy walking distance, but has a large notice on their front page saying IF YOU HAVE THE MEANS TO TRAVEL, GO TO OUR COLLEAGUES AT THE SHOWGROUND so I thought I'd better do my bit.

[crinolinerobot]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend.

And yeah, NO to 44-hour weeks!

[white_hart]

Thank you.

No to 44-hour weeks is more easily said than done! Especially when one is over-conscientious and doesn't actually have anyone in Authority telling them that working less than 44 hours is OK and not slacking.

[lokifan]

Wow, and I thought last week was mixed for me! (A ton of flatmate drama + getting to see a friend in person for the first time since August.) Congratulations and commiserations.

[white_hart]

Flatmate drama sounds unfun :-(

[nineveh_uk]

Annoying as your MK experience was, it is now benefiting me as when the nearest appointments were in Aylesbury (44 year olds now admitted) I just went "Ah, like white_hart experienced, I shall wait for the Kassam to come up with slots."

[white_hart]

Well, I'm glad it was helpful to someone! (I have pointed this out to a few 44-year-old friends today who have looked online and thought they might have to go to Aylesbury/couldn't get to Aylesbury as they don't drive.)

[nineveh_uk]

Obviously Aylesbury is oversupplied with vaccines! It might be nice if they had a clearer message on the site about it, given that it seems quite a few of us get the same phenomenon. I could drive to Aylesbury, but I definitely don't want to, as it would be the only thing I could do that day and would have to be a weekend.

[white_hart]

It really isn't very clear. I had lots of people telling me I should just book an appointment in Milton Keynes when I had the same issue but that just seemed ridiculous.