From the frying pan into the fire: here comes another Covid booster...

 OMG, another booster! I must be a glutton for punishment. This one isn't actually a "booster". It's a full-sized, tortuous Covid shot. That's another five days of staying in bed, feeling like I'm dying of some dreaded disease that has no name (actually, the name is Pfizer), shaking myself into pieces, and wondering if I'm going to survive this one, this time. Lucky? Maybe.

This will be vaccine number 5. That's what I said: 5. I've been putting it off since June, and I got severely told off by the immunology team for delaying something that is very, very vital. So they tell me. This is what happens when you're born with a defective immune system: everyone seems to be coming at you from every different direction.

Well...if this one on Friday is as bad as the four previous ones, you won't hear from me until next week. I'll spend a few days crying, throwing up, and generally being very cranky.

I thought that I was the only person who had a severe reaction. I call five days of being totally incapacitated a "severe reaction". But-not so. I made it my business to talk to as many Covid vaccination veterans as I could, and discovered that, although some lucky souls only had a headache for a day, others had as terrible a reaction as I had. Not very much comfort, I have to add; misery doesn't always love company.

Just for the record-from what I've been told and from what I discovered by investigating thoroughly-the Astra Zeneca vaccine is the worst for nasty aftereffects. People got really, really sick-for days-and the vaccine, while okay, was never the best and most effective anyway. The best and most effective is the Pfizer-but it also kept me bedbound for five days each time, so I'm a bit disgruntled. Still-it's better than risk dying of Covid. And people are still dying. 

One of my neighbors-called Lorna-is this horrible, nasty gossip who also pretends to be a very religious woman. All the hail marys in the world won't stop her from going to hell, that's for sure. She's been going around the area telling anyone who will listen (that's basically nobody) That this is biblical. Covid, long Covid, monkeypox, the state of the economy, the state of the world-we're all going to Hell, she says.

I said-yesterday, when she cornered me-that she'll be the first one to go. As for me, I said:

You go to Hell, Lorna. Me, I'm going to Starbucks.

See you next week...

London Broil: Baked, fried, microwaved, roasted or sautéed?

 I used to say that it's hard to hit a moving target. Well-hard, difficult, but not impossible. Try 104F and see how easy it is when your target is fried to a crisp. Since the ghastly, miserable heatwave of a couple of weeks ago hit us without warning, it's been difficult to do anything except sit in front of the fan and sweat. 

It's been a month like that-hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and I've been feeling like a salmon swimming upstream. You swim, swim, swim-like your life depends on it-and, exhausted, you finally get there, throw yourself over the top, thinking that you are safe at last-and someone eats you for lunch. What a sad end to an illustrious career.

There's no point in rehashing the stories about the disgusting, crooked,  incompetent Boris Johnson - aka Bozo - because everyone has already heard them (in ad nauseum, I might add). And Trump-well, the two of them should be gelded.

There is a point in telling you that when you give someone enough rope and they hang themselves with it, you should do the most intelligent thing-and walk away. I don't even want to think about all the times I didn't do that, and suffered as a result. That's a neat way of saying that I did it again. Arghhh!!!

I've always been a sucker for a sob story. I've also been a sucker for the underdog, even when that dog is an egregious liar who deserves putting down. Well-here goes, slap me later.

If you've been with me for awhile, you know the story of Terry the psycho bin thief. Terry steals things that don't belong to him: recycling bins (no, I don't know why, either. Maybe he sleeps with them. God knows that he's so ugly, no woman who isn't blind would even pay him the slightest bit of attention). Well-Terry has been on the rampage for a few months. And Rob, someone who offended me three years ago and whom I've ignored ever since, came to me (yet again, like he did three years ago) to ask for my help. So, activist (and occasional idiot) that I am, I jumped right in to sort things out and put things right. Ohhhh, dear-I hear you say-and how did that work out for you? You can guess.

Terry has been threatening people who are in their 80s and 90s-old people who are very frail, and can't stand up for themselves (can barely stand up at all), so I went to war.

It's a good idea to hide all access to emails when I get going. I politely emailed the senior managers at Haringey to let them know what was going on. I got no response. I emailed again. Same thing: nothing. I then stopped being so polite, asking them if they can remember that they are responsible for the health, safety and well-being of all tenants in the borough. Nothing. Then they got the required (to me) number of threatening emails (threatening to go to the police and to the media). Nothing. So I went to both.

It was like lighting a fire under their asses-because they suddenly sent someone to talk to Baster-which they did several times, and which they ignored.

Long story a bit shorter: is there a satisfactory ending to this? Well-yes and no. Next week a  senior manager is coming to talk to all of us, and bringing the antisocial behavior person who spoke to Baster without any luck. And I went to the Housing Ombudsman, who have written to Haringey asking what they are going to do about this hideously longstanding problem.

I will, of course, let you know at the end of next week what-if anything-has happened. I'm not finished yet. There's always Twitter.

So that brings us up to date. My friend back home calls me "London Broil"- more heat to come, but cooler, only in the middle 90s. Still horrible. If I don't keep moving, someone (probably Baster) will stick a skewer in me, baste me, and let me get well done enough to have a nice dinner.

I'll keep you informed. Meanwhile, remember that if someone asks for volunteers-keep your head and your hands down. Never volunteer for anything. Always give people enough rope to hang themselves first. Then decide...