Positive healing

Saturday 14th November, 2020

I got really cross this afternoon. I popped in to the local Co-op on my walk. I found a delicious double chicken and bacon wrap for sale, reduced from £2.40 to 82p. It had been a good day. I slept well. It was dry. Breakfast was delicious and I walked to get the newspaper. Then I read it while having a coffee. A bit depressing as the usual OTT stuff about Cummings leaving Number 10 Downing Street and the infighting and chaos of the Prime Minister's Office. Lots of mentions of intrigue and the powers behind the throne and the eminence gris...a real political thriller! From that dull and depressing news to Covid and a draft of opinions many depressing. The only news that lit me up was the finding of letters and poems of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.

Anyway off on my walk with a bounce in my step. A few passers by stepped off the pavement to find the two metre wide berth. A lovely black Labrador asked for petting. Two children on bicycles waved happily. The Tay was looking glorious and I stood and watched the sun highlight the hills of Perth. An amazing array of clouds and colours with green hills underneath. ' Just Grand ' as they say in Heaney's land.

Into the Co-op. Found my lunch and chatted to a woman to whom I gave my place in the queue. She seemed harassed and in a hurry with a little fellow with her. I had read in the paper earlier how a journalist who had reported and chronicled his change from male to female had been deeply upset when the three women with whom he had being having a drink in a pub got really angry when a man had said, as they left, 'bye ladies'. They turned on him and told him how such a comment demeaned them, how offensive it was to single them out as inferior and in need of patronage. I recalled how some time ago I had been on the London Underground when it was crowded. I offered my seat to a woman who was equally abrupt and refused with a snub. I also recalled the first time a young person had offered me a seat on a full bus because of my age, I presume. I was a little startled to realise that I must have looked my age but I accepted with gratitude. He was being polite, thoughtful and well mannered not ageist!

Anyway as I became next in line at the shop till I heard the man before me saying to the attendant ' I am a doctor so do not believe that the vaccine will work. We are in for much hell and heart ache '. The cashier looked crest fallen. My immediate thought was that the doctor had a bad bedside manner. Surely his job was to reassure in these times when many are stressed and anxious. It would have been better if he had been silent. He went off and I handed over my purchase and a £1 coin. Then I crossed my fingers and said 'I too have medical knowledge and the vaccine will work, it is a brilliant discovery now developed and ever being bettered. We will beat this bug and then that bugger can eat his words'. The cashier looked mildly flummoxed and then smiled saying ' we need good news and healing'.

I walked off my irritation and anger. I may have been wrong but I am fed up with negativity. I was brought up to be positive, helpful, courteous and sensitive. I fail to be those things but my instinct was that the cashier and I both needed a positive input, especially from a doctor. I am glad to say the chicken and bacon wrap did not taste sour! Am I simply out of tune with society? I shall resort to Heaney.