When I was still stuck in Portsmouth and fed up with my locks getting picked all the time, one day (I think this was in 2022), I told a post office worker first and Gerald Vernon-Jackson next that I was going to start killing people if this didn’t stop. I didn’t mean that, obviously, but I was so desperate for someone to LISTEN to me and step up for me and I hoped that this would finally get people’s attention.

IT DID NOT.

When I volunteered in the Covid vaccination effort, I had no electricity and no hot water. The weather was cold.

When I worked in the COLD tent outside, where people had to wait after their jabs before they could leave, in case they had any instant adverse effects that needed medical intervention, I would go home after my shifts to a flat that was warm relative to the tent. That was nice.

(That requirement for people to have to wait before they could leave was dropped later.)

When I worked indoors, where it was light and warm, I would go back to a flat that would be freezing cold, by comparison. It was pretty miserable.

I barely had any food, too.

The people at the vaccination center had no idea.

When it was busy, volunteering there was great. Finally, after so many years of climbing the walls, I had something to do that kept me busy. Locals were amazed to discover that I was actually capable of telling people which door to go to. They didn’t think that I had that in me.

(They’d been telling each other that I was some kind of “retard” for so long, by then. Someone apparently started that rumor before I moved to Portsmouth and everyone seems to have believed it. After all, nobody knew me.)

As soon as there were more volunteers than patients, when the foreign volunteers had left (gone back to university, for example), bickering and boredom started kicking in. The volunteers were just standing around doing nothing, most of the time. Not my kind of thing.

Besides, I clearly was no longer needed.

There was a big rush to get the booster shots before the holidays, but that was over in January. Most people who stopped by then were asking for flu shots, not Covid jabs.

I had asked to volunteer earlier but did not appear to be able to reach anyone. I couldn’t join any of the local Covid support groups on Facebook either. All I could find was a group in a small village somewhere to the north of Portsmouth. I knew there were local groups; some people had posters in their windows.

Some years earlier, when I wanted to post a Christmas greeting for someone, I could no longer find that place on Facebook either (but they were still on it).

Did I already mention that Gerald and I actually have a university in common?