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Flu jab season is here, and they’re free if you’re over 65, or if you’re younger and have one of a number of health conditions. There’s a whole list on the NHS website, but the one that will never apply to me is whether or not I am pregnant. However, I do have ongoing checkups following a life-long condition which necessitated an aortic valve replacement operation in 1994 and daily warfarin tablets after that, along with lots of other medication.
They even do them on Saturday mornings in some GP surgeries and I booked mine for this morning, went in, was about to go to the reception desk when I saw the automated check-in machine which I’d never used before. After entering my date of birth, it recognised me, told me who I would be seeing and that there was a delay of zero minutes and to take a seat in the waiting room. So I did.
The next two entrants to the surgery ignored the machine (fools, I say! It’s there to make your life easier!) and went straight to the receptionist. One sat down in the waiting room, while the other, who entered five minutes after I arrived, was directed towards a corridor just past me. While I was sat down I had time to reminisce how my doctors had finally caught up with my dream of a 1988 world a la Die Hard where John McClane could find out where his ex-wife was hiding out, annoyed with her for using her maiden name, yet referring to the inventive device that brought him such crushing news as a “cute toy”.
However, then I came back to reality and realised that the second chap might just also be there for a flu jab. I asked the receptionist and mentioned I’d checked-in on the entry tablet. She said it had worked and pointed me in the direction of the corridor-bound chap who was now making his exit. On entering the room for my jab, which took all of a few seconds, the nurse checked the machine and it didn’t appear to have me down as checking in.
There was a time I thought I had got the hang of technology. I was a lot younger and I seem to have completely lost it in my addled middle age. Even when I was playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004, I didn’t realise you could set a marker on the map to help you get from A to B a lot more easily. My nephew had to show me. He was 9 at the time.
The moral of this story is – if you’re over 40, ignore technology and talk to a human. They’re a lot more interesting and more communicative. Unless they’re a taxi driver or a white van man. Some of them just need a punch up the wazoo!
If you’re unsure about whether you qualify for a free flu jab, ask your local GP surgery. Even if you don’t, some supermarkets are doing them for around £15, of all places.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.