IT is nearly three years since Covid reared its ugly head, and in that time, we have seen the worst and the best in people, the best well without a doubt the medical profession who worked under back breaking conditions without a fuss. 

The council workers, the police, postal service, bus drivers, trains everyone of them working to try and keep this country running.

The supermarkets, their lorry drivers bringing goods to fill the shelves.

However, on the downside, those who stripped the shelves bare in supermarkets I labelled the SGTB Selfish, Greedy, Thoughtless, Brigade. And then we had the ‘I am not wearing a mask, it infringes my human rights… I am not having the vaccine you don’t the side effects’. I was in a shop when someone walked in not wearing a mask.

When asked to put one on the response was to yell at the assistant that he was and using a very nasty name gave a salute and left the shop I stood there, mouth open totally disbelieving what I had just witnessed.

When Covid showed up in Australia they did what any sensible country should do, closed both their interstate borders and international borders, that was it, keep out and masks and vaccines were an acceptable part of that world.

But good old Britain, did we close out borders, nope, they remained open although we had quarantine in place that wasn’t enough. I remember when Marina my daughter in WA said in horror that 180 new cases had been diagnosed in one week…  that was probably in one second in this country.

We had people come over here waving placards calling us all the names under the sun, and demanding we change names of street, pull down statues, gathering in huge crowds fighting the police and police horses being hit with sticks and metal bars during lockdown.

What made matters worst was our MPs spent their time, back stabbing, in-fighting, pointing the finger ‘he had an office party… she went out during lockdown’ and so on, instead of running this country during  the pandemic During the last war, the Government did work together as a united front fighting a common cause, it may not have been bullets or bombs this time but a virus that was causing a lot of pain and suffering and all our Parliament could do was try and point score.

Diphtheria, TB, Polio, smallpox, scarlet fever, all nasty deadly diseases not quite completely eradicated, but kept under control and how was that, by vaccines. I can remember standing in a line at school with the other kids and having a ‘jection’ trying not cry cos it hurt, but knowing it was to keep me safe. It didn’t infringe my human rights or put me in danger of getting some dreadful side effect, but it stopped the polio epidemic of the late 40s.

Strikes, high interest rates, price rises in foods, our gas and electric...I don’t want to sound smug but I have been through that years ago, it was scary and frightening, and I can remember thinking I had won the jackpot when I found money down the side of the sofa. It is frightening but you come through it and  find yourself looking at life very differently. The important things in life are your family, and home. We’ve come through the pandemic relatively unscathed, we can fight this as well.

Some of you know I am a volunteer in the Mare and Foal shop here in Newton Abbot. If you wanted to tease one of my regulars him you’d say just two words, oh boy he’s almost have steam coming out of his ears.

But during the pandemic he looked at me one day and said: ‘You’ll never believe this but I wish she was here, she’d make them stop messing around and make us fall in line.’ I laughed and said Yes I, too, wish Maggie was here, he he he!