Swine 'flu jab

For those that care (and I know you’re few and far between) I had my swine ‘flu jab last night. It was as much fun as any vaccine injection I’ve had before and I now have a mildly aching arm this morning. But that’s as far as the side effects go. Oink! Again I was impressed with how well organised my local surgery was – in and out in three minutes. So compared to the utter misery of actually getting ‘flu a slightly sore arm and a few minutes of my time is a tiny price to pay.

That vaccines can be created so quickly and dealt out so efficiently is of great comfort in the, perhaps unlikely (but not impossible) event of worldwide zombie infestation. I think you’ll agree that all of us have wondered at some point what would happen in the event of the undead rising up from their foetid graves and roaming the earth trying to sate their hunger for spicy brains. Currently the only known cure for the infected is, of course, to remove the head or destroy the brain – with a cricket bat, fire-axe, lawnmower or any other blunt instrument that comes to hand.

One would hope that should such an outbreak occur the nation’s best scientists (presuming that they themselves hadn’t been bitten, infected and transformed into one of the untold legions of undead) would be able to come up with a vaccine pretty quickly and my local surgery would be efficiently dolling out the cure to the local populace within a month or so of the first cases being reported.

We all know that diabetes is, to be honest, a bit of pain. But compared to zombification and brainlessly lurching after humans with a view to consuming their living flesh (do you get vegetarian zombies I wonder?) we diabetics have it easy. I think this important point should have been a major feature of World Diabetes Day – I suppose there’s always next year…