Could we get a refund on the bus pass which we can’t use?
Cocooner Kevin Mulligan reflects on living with COVID in these challenging days
Just thinking the other day that I’d apply for a refund on my travel pass.
I haven’t used it in a year, and who knows when I’ll need it again.
I know it’s free to all us pensioners, but it seems as everyone else is getting refunds from the government - why not the over 70s - are we not entitled?
The irony is that when we could travel there wasn’t a seat to be had, especially on the Enterprise train leaving Dundalk.
Now you could have a carriage to yourself. It’s the same with the buses.
When I’m allowed out - which is seldom these days - I can’t help but notice the empty buses making their way to and from Dublin.
Even the local buses have taken on a forlorn look.
Another victim of this awful pandemic. Last March, less than 10 months ago, you would have given your hind teeth for a share in the Matthews bus enterprise.
Their hourly service to the capital was almost always full to capacity.
That service - prompt, efficient, punctual, and operated by considerate, courteous staff - had become an envied and major asset to our connectivity links.
Now, like many other efficiently run, profitable businesses, it is suffering.
All we can do is hope, and pray, that it, and many others, will be there when this terribly nightmare ends.
It would help of course if we could plan for a few summer trips linking in with Matthews buses or the Enterprise.
We could, if we thought that we would have a vaccine by then.
But that looks like a forlorn hope snarled up in the bureaucratic jungle that has become a way of life in this country.
Why all the fuss?
Yearly we get our flu jab from the nurse in our doctor’s surgery, or the pharmacy.
No pain, no fuss, no big deal.
Why didn’t Donald tell us COVID was just like the flu? Is the COVID jab not the same as the flu jab?
Perhaps then again we shouldn’t heed too much what Donald says - not that he will be saying much now that his soapbox has been kicked from under his feet by Twitter, silencing his bumptious megaphone at last.
There is of course one route we could take to getting the jab a little quicker.
That route is open to all of my vintage, for the UK passport website states ‘you’re a British subject if you were a citizen of the Republic of Ireland on 31st December, 1948 and made a claim to remain a British subject’.
The majority of us over 70s qualify.
It is a bit extreme, I’ll admit, but then if it’s one means by which one could jump the vaccination queue, for the North are well ahead of us in promising that all over 70s will be getting the jab within weeks.
On second thoughts best abandon that route, for confinement in the prison cell that the house has become is a lot more preferable to having Boris as your leader.
The world is about to rid itself of one lunatic - why sign up with another?
At least both Donald and Boris have provided us with great diversion during the long nights watching TV.
What would we do without them? We’ll miss Donald when he’s gone and so will the newspapers and TV networks.
They never have to search for news when they’re around.
Our Joe is going to seem awful dull when he finally takes over on January 20th.
Not that our own are doing all that much better of late.
They’re making as many U-turns as Boris’s government or our joy riders.
The criticism of the slow roll-out of vaccine has led to a U-turn of the two-jab schedule originally planned, but thankfully this will allow patients and staff in care homes in this area to get the jab earlier than scheduled.
Witness too the proposal to have Leaving Cert students return for three days a week at the height of the pandemic, and at a time when Dr. Tony and his team are imploring everyone to lock their doors at stay at home.
The idea undoubtedly had merit, but lacked consultation with parents, teachers and pupils and is so doing allowed the government and the Minister to be exposed to the belief held by many that the teachers’ unions are calling all the shots.
You have to ask at times, where do we get such leaders from?
Is it a prerequisite for the job that they all take a course in failing to apply basic common sense in their decisions.
Yes it’s a grim time for all.
Hard at times to see the light at the end of this dark tunnel that they all keep talking about.
But when the knees are creaking and some of us may be in need of walking aids, that light they keep talking about seems to be getting further away.
Never mind, we’ll persist, sustained by the support of our families, the dedication of our medical staff and the kindness and consideration of the forgotten, the many in the shops that are opened who make sure we get our food to the shelves and delivered.