I returned to London for Christmas, to spend it with my elderly mother. A few weeks before, she visited a pharmacy in Fulham to have her Covid booster jab, shortly after receieving her winter flu jab. Despite telling the pharmacist why she was there (to have the Covid booster jab) she was given a second flu jab (in 6 hours). She contracted a viral infection shortly after which did not respond to antibiotics, and shortly after that contracted shingles. She is currently in hospital for this. I do not know if she will make it.

I had to go to Superdrug to collect prescriptions for her. We switched from Boots after the security guard there would follow me around the store, arms folded, at the request of Ricky Gardezi’s TSS security company and the Mark Adedeji’s security guards who work the Fulham Broadway Shopping Center. That had left me too intimidated to use Boots as a prescription dispenser. I had never visited Superdrug for perhaps a decade, but on my first visit there, I got the usual strange behaviour from the pharamcy staff, namely looks of apparent recognition, the very sarcastic and deliberate ‘you’re welcome’ after politely thanking them for serving me, and even on my last visit, the female Asian pharmacist gave the sarcastic ‘you’re welcome’ to the person served in front of me in the queue, while very theatrically saying ‘thank you so much’ when handing me the prescription’. A few minutes before, when they saw me approach the queue, she appeared to say something to her male colleague, to which he laughed and mentioned my mother’s name.