‘Wait for fifteen minutes, just to make sure you are okay with the jags.’
I am guided to two lines of booths facing each other. Partitioned. Some with one chair, some with two.
A poster advises to keep your distance from others. There is an arrow with EXIT marked in large, red letters.
They are vaccinating teenagers and giving booster and flu jabs to the over sixties.
I can see the younger people at the far end of the hallway. Smiling. Laughing. Joking. Sitting with concerned parents who are shushing them to keep quiet.
On my right are an older man and woman. Another woman appears and sits opposite. She starts a conversation.
‘Aye Helen, a wis just thinkin the other day that Agnes has been deid twenty-five years. She passed on the same week it wis ma fiftieth birthday. And ave just had ma 75th.’
Helen looked back and said, ‘Do ye remember wee Jimmy, the chippy van man? It wis his funeral last week. We were up at the graveside. He died the same day as his faither. His faither was Big Jock. He had the chippy van before Jimmy. A had a walk round the cimitry efter the funeral wi Alan.’
‘It wis like walkin doon the auld street’, said Alan, ‘wi aw the neebours lyin side by side.’
‘A wanted tae see young Paul’s grave’, added Helen. ‘Mary wis niver the same efter he wis killed oot in Afghanistan. At least they’re the gither now.’
‘Ah know’, replied the other woman. ‘Oor Margaret’s John wis his best pal. Terrible. Bein found like that by his mither.’
‘George is lyin up in Coltmuir’, said Alan. ‘We took Ella up tae see him yisterday. They said he wad only last a week, and that wis three weeks ago. When we wir in seein him the nurse came in to check on him. She looked under the covers and said, ‘His legs are goin black and that’s always a sign that they’ve no got long to go.’ Ella was upset but she knows he’s better away.’
‘Aye’, added Helen, ‘her weans have said she’s too auld to be lookin efter herself and that she should be thinkin of movin into a home. Ah telt her there were some lovely care assisted flats up in the village. Eadie lives in one of them and there are always vacancies comin up.’
‘Ah think it’s that son of hers that’s pushin her to move’, said Alan. ‘He just wants his hands on her hoose. It will be selt as soon as she goes. And anyway, she telt us that she doesna want to move into a place that’s fu of auld folk.’
‘A’m goin to the chapel efter here’, said the other woman. ‘They’re takin Annie there at five. Her funeral’s the morn at ten, then it’s Sally’s at twelve. Two funerals on the same mornin. That’s just plain daft. It leaves nae time to get to the cimitry and then back to the chapel for the nixt yin.’
Fifteen minutes up.
They shuffled out before me.
When my time was up, I left the building.
I passed them on the way back to the car, still talking about the recent dead and long deceased.
One Pagers 