Heavily sullen heat predicts a bad day. You arrive in musty dry clothes, good ones.Harris Tweed jacket, V-neck fairisle sweater-hand knit, someone loved you, maybe they still do? But in this weather? Let’s unwrap you. Your rake thin body is shaking like a dry leaf. Let’s watch your arthritic hands fumble, buttons can’t be managed, let’s preserve your dignity and suggest a rolled up shirt sleeve will suffice. Might not. Let’s keep up the tempo, chat casually behind our masks. Let’s not be hurried although through the screen a queue grows.

You’ve waited for this, it’s been in your diary for a while now and someone has altered their day to bring you. And here we are, just you and I. And the job will be done swiftly, I’m well practiced. Perhaps you needed the toilet but you hadn’t wanted to lose your place in the queue. Perhaps you can’t hear me when I ask for your postcode. Perhaps you can’t remember. You try to stand, looking for the papers in your trouser pocket; I help you balance while you fumble. Not there. Your name and date of birth will suffice.

Wars, rationing, hard times probably, although we don’t have time to go into that. Then this plague and now a possible life saver. No wonder you tremble. Or maybe you don’t want your life saved, maybe you’ve spent your allocation of good days and now only bad days are left. The knitter of the sweater, the chooser of the jacket, are they here or have they gone?

Exposing your arm up to the boney shoulder I stroke onion peel thin skin, mottled with faint bruise marks. In goes needle, quick. Jab. I don’t feel bone. We smile at one another. It’s not such a bad day today is it?