Half and Half

          Being home alone presents an opportunity to indulge one’s own preferences. So it was that, on day two of my Other Half’s absence, I took unilateral action on a particular dilemma. For several months, there have been blank spaces on the walls and a small stack of framed pictures in a corner, awaiting joint decisions on the aesthetics of positioning them. I was, myself, due to leave for a visit to relatives but, before I did, I made the decision, on impulse, to hang three of the pictures. It was a daredevil move that may or may not break the deadlock.

          Afterwards, as I boarded a train to Lincolnshire, I received a text from the NHS about booking my next covid vaccination. I’ll do that next week, when I get back, I thought. I was going to spend a few days with my sister, Claudette, who is recovering from major spinal surgery, and her husband, David, who, in the process of caring for her at home, suffered a recurrence of a dislocated kneecap. My planned visit, born of sympathy for Claudette, had thereby acquired a more practical purpose.

          And so I find myself in Ruskington, Lincolnshire’s largest village – or smallest town. Whichever you choose, it’s a settlement typical of the county in appearance and ambience: architecturally unsophisticated and never far from agriculture. While David rested his knee, I walked, slowly and carefully, with my sister to a house on the edge of a field, from which an organic egg-distribution business is run and a self-serve honesty box arrangement is provided for local customers. Country living has its ruddy-cheeked benefits.

          The next day brought good news and bad. First, the good: the USA mid-term election result signalled an apparent return to decency and civility in American politics. If it represented also a repudiation of corrupt, autocratic and plutocratic state control, then it was affirmation of a trend seen a week or two earlier in Bosnia, where Vucic was ousted, and in Brazil, where Bolsonaro was binned. If there is a bad-news aspect to these outcomes, it is that Trump might prove to be more wounded beast than lame duck during his last two years in office.

          But there was actual bad news in the fact that David went down with covid – a virus that I thought had mostly disappeared from everyday life (though I understand it is not as life-threatening as it once was, having mutated to a form that affects mainly the upper respiratory tract). Nevertheless, while David could be heard making alarming coughing sounds in the bedroom, Claudette and I fretted over the best course of action.

          She phoned every known NHS facility, got passed round in a big circle and was offered nothing but advice. We had both been vaccinated (she because of a compromised immune system, I because of my age) and were due for boosters in the coming days. Would our immunity hold out, or would the three of us soon be coughing and spluttering in unison, trapped in an NHS nightmare of automated telephone chatbots?

          Good news prevailed. By the next day, David’s condition had stabilised and neither Claudette nor I was displaying symptoms. Meanwhile, we had both made our appointments for booster jabs the next week. It was timely, therefore, to read in the paper that day, in an article about Historic England’s concern over its extensive register of sites at-risk, that one of those recently saved is the world’s first vaccination clinic (according to western historians, at any rate). In 1796, in his garden summer house, Edward Jenner successfully vaccinated an eight-year-old boy, thereby initiating a procedure that led to the eventual eradication of smallpox worldwide. Thank you, E. Jenner.

          Now that our situation here in Ruskington appears stable, I plan to return to Plymouth tomorrow, my Other Half having preceded me. I’m certain she will be pleased to know that, despite their woes, Claudette and David are in good spirits and that I have dodged the covid bullet, apparently. What I’m not so sure of is whether my bold attempt at picture-hanging without consultation will be embraced or vetoed. After all, Other Halves do wield a degree of power: one half of it, to be exact.