WHAT’S GRANT SHAPPS GOT THAT I HAVEN’T?

HOW lovely for Grant Shapps to be the first member of the cabinet to get a Covid-19 vaccination. And if that sounds a little bitter, then it is.

The Transport Secretary is 52 years old, so how did that happen? He told his local newspaper, the Welwyn Hatfield Times: ‘I received my call from the GP surgery to come for my first vaccination.

‘ I was so surprised to receive the call I actually called back and checked they got it right. Turns out it’s because a couple of decades ago I had cancer.’

What? I had cancer, thankfully caught very early, much more recently than that. And I’m 64. But no call from our own local surgery for a jab. Which is fair enough, because having had cancer is not on the NHS vaccine priority list.

But I have been feeling increasingly left out. My elder daughter had the vaccine in December, as she works for the NHS and has been seeing patients throughout. My younger daughter was inoculated three weeks ago because she has a condition the NHS defines as one which makes her ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’. And my wife was vaccinated at the same time, because she is designated as a carer for our daughter.

I couldn’t be happier that they are all now on the way to be being fully protected, of course. I was less overjoyed, during a ‘Zoom dinner’ last week with some friends, who are younger than me, when all of them said they had just had their first jab. They are Londoners, and perhaps things are moving faster there than in rural East Sussex, where we live: even so, it was hard to express my delight at their good fortune with complete sincerity.

Then, on Friday, I had a call from our surgery inviting me to ‘come in for … a blood test, to check on your PSA levels’. Hopes raised and then dashed within a single sentence. What’s Grant Shapps got that I haven’t? Yes, I know: a Covid vaccination certificate.