When I got a message telling me to make an
appointment for (yet another) covid vaccination, I chose a Tuesday morning at
09.40, carefully calculated so that I could mosey on afterwards to the
excellent coffee shop on the corner, just in time for my habitual ten o’clock brew.
But I hadn’t taken into account the fact that the jab is nowadays completely routine.
There’s no queueing, no stewards, no masks, no ‘distancing’ and – notably – no anxiety.
The two nurses – one jabbing at arms, the other jabbing at a keyboard – were polite,
efficient and inured to the jokey comments that I was certainly not the first
to have made. It was all over in thirty seconds, leaving me with a full quarter
of an hour to amble to the coffee shop. I arrived earlier than planned but, fortuitously,
they were busy, so the coffee actually arrived at my table bang on ten o’clock.
I love coincidence.
After that satisfactory
start, the rest of the day followed suit, but by the evening a reaction to the
jab was making me feel poorly. I went to bed early, hoping to recover by
morning, but the next day I was worse and I spent most of it lolling around,
feeling unfit for much except reading the novel I had begun earlier in the
week. If there’s any good comes out of feeling poorly, it’s the justification –
if any were needed – for reading novels during the day. In this book*, the
protagonist has a pet dog that has only one leg. (Yes, the rest of the story is
equally incredible, but suspension of disbelief is the key to enjoying it.)
Towards the end, I came across the word “syllogism”,
which I had to look up. It’s a term used in philosophy to describe a particular
process of logical proof. First identified by Aristotle, the definition can be
hard to follow: it’s a kind of logical argument that
applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two
propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. Fortunately,
the dictionary gave a helpful, not to mention spookily apposite example: “All
dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore, all dogs have four
legs.” I am not making this up. As I said, I love coincidence.
On
reflection, a one-legged dog may have been born that way, or might have lost
limbs in an accident. Either way, it calls into question the proposition, “all
dogs”. Furthermore, the statement that “all animals have four legs” does
prompt the enquiring mind to ask about kangaroos and suchlike. But of course,
the example purports to illustrate the structure and function of a syllogism,
not the validity of its propositions. If asked, it would be best to stick with
the bog-standard example: “All men are mortal; Aristotle is a man; therefore,
Aristotle is mortal.” Those propositions are pretty hard to rebut.
Yesterday, restored
to full vitality, I cycled out on an errand, using a stretch of pavement as a
short cut. Although I went slowly, careful not to distress the few pedestrians,
nevertheless an older lady cursed me and asked the question, “What’s wrong with
the bloody road?” I made the mistake of stopping to explain and excuse my transgression,
but she would not be pacified and our exchange became tetchy. At last, she
waved me away in disgust. However, coincidence came to the rescue soon
afterwards, when we met again, this time in a nearby café. As an act of
contrition, I took the opportunity to apologise to her for being a bit of an
arse. Pavements are for pedestrians (by law); cyclists are not pedestrian (when
they are cycling); therefore, I should have been on the bloody road. She certainly
appreciated the apology, but the time was fast approaching ten, so I ordered a flat-white-to-go
and left her relishing her syllogistic triumph over what appeared to be a
large cappuccino.
*Dr. No by Percival Everett
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