Well, they're saying not to do both at the same time anway, so that's probably OK.

My friend had her covid booster and flu jabs the same day, one in each arm, and said she was fine. I haven't heard about my booster yet and am having the flu one tomorrow. I'm not sure I'd fancy going for both together.

In Jersey they are now doing both at the same time, one in each arm.

Today I went to a pharmacy and had the flu jab, in my other arm.

I've heard both - it seems like the earlier advice was one at a time but now they're fine with both at the same time.

I just had my pneumonia vaccine with my flu shot and the flu shot was nothing... The pneumonia one hurt for a week!

On the covid jab questionnaire it asks if you have had any other vaccination within the past x number of days, probably an old form.

I got ready to have the booster jab in my left arm. I was then asked how long ago the flu injection was. I couldn't remember exactly but knew it was in the left arm. Since I couldn't remember, I was given the jab into my right arm as a precaution. This seemed to be the concern rather than the length of time between the two injections.

Fine, I am happy with that.

I have just had an interesting couple of days, I had an argument with a bramble in the garden and we both lost! I tried pulling up a bramble using both hands and all my strength, it put up a good fight but I won in that it came out of the ground with all eighteen inches (45cms) of root, however it got its own back as when it came out I shot backwards and fell into a fuchsia bush and hit my head on a 30+ year old jasmine trunk. I take warfarin and the instructions given when they start you on it is that if you hit your head get to A&E immediately.

My CT scan was clear but in case there was a small bleed they admitted me and I was on hourly obs for 24 hours plus. I also had a full neurological assessment before discharge.

What has this to do with Covid you ask, well before admitting me they did a PCR test and the negative result was emailed me just after 11pm, so presumably the hospital got the result before that. I was isolated in a room in the A&E department until gone midnight before going to the ward - so wasn't taking Covid there with me. On the ward all staff were masked but the patients didn't need them, as we were all negative.

I'm glad you're all right! I didn't get your message until it was a bit late but I did pass it on and I know Sara knows you're okay now so phew! It was one of those times when my message box had the same number of messages for days - unfortunately I missed the hour when the total went down then up again.

There is, ahem, some noxious weedkiller that is used on shrubs and bushes. I got some to kill a pesky shrub that sends suckers out several feet underground and then they pop up in many metres from the parent plant and you can't pull them up because there's always another sucker... Anyway, that stuff kills brambles, and bindweed too! Next time you feel like a wrestling match, let me know and I'll give you the details!

I do have some brush killer which will do the job, you need to be clear of other plants. If it is a tiny one they pull out without any problems but this one was very mature.

I discovered that the best way to kill them is to paint the weedkiller onto the leaves of plants like bindweed. I make sure that the weed is not tangled with another plant by making it grow up a cane before painting the leaves. With bushes, I cut them down, and painted the chemical on to the 'raw' stems. If the stem was very woody and thicker than, say, 3/4 of an inch, I poked/drilled a hole into the cut and painted over that so that some weedkiller dripped into the hole. Needs to be a dry day but it works - and doesn't affect other plants.

Oh, sue, glad you're OK!

So was I. She did the same to me 20 years ago, with a stroke and ensuing heart stuff... I had her in a heap on the floor until I got Flopsy's message. I was thinking about how I could renew my passport to get back to the funeral, wondering if I had anything black to wear. The mind plays strange tricks . Who'd have thought our gallant Sue was wrestling with brambles? I am relieved to say the least.

I don't want black at my funeral thank you! Nice and bright will do nicely.

Glad you're doing ok!

I got my booster shot yesterday. Only had a headache this time and today my arm is sore. Stopped the steroids for my nose last week and my chest still feels like I'm breathing in cold air constantly... I'm wondering if that's now my anxiety I keep trying to not worry about other things.

Got boostered yesterday in a rather chaotic environment. The county had set up a popup vaccination center at the same building we had the real thing during summer, but it was all massively improvised. Screens only at the actual shot station, everything else was just lines and marker tape. Staffing is from local hospitals and GPs who work there 4pm to 8pm after normal shifts. Sounds ugly to start with, right?

And then yesterday, the news broke (in relatively small print) that the minimum recommended distance between 2nd and 3rd shots was shortened from 5 to 3 months. Open the floodgates. I actually had planned to go today, which would have been exactly 5 months but decided that it was probably a better idea to try and beat the wave of those who'd not find the news online but rather in the evening news or today's morning paper.

So let's set off and try to get there by 4pm. Well, try was the keyword. Quick thing came up and I only managed 4:15, bad news. The understaffed, overrun center was quickly building a backlog - 30 minutes to even get inside the building, 30 minutes from entry temperature check to where forms would get checked, 30 more to see the doctor for the 1 minute advisory talk, 40 from there to get the actual shot and then the usual 15 min observation/wait room to ensure people wouldn't get anaphylactics. Two and a half hours total and behind me, the queues only got LONGER. If it took that long just to process those relatively few who arrived before me, one can only guess how long it had to be later. And what it will be like tonight.

The actual bottleneck - they had ONE full-schedule person able to actually prepare the syringes, drawing the shots from the vials. That was for 4 different types - Moderna full dose (1st/2nd), Moderna booster, Pfizer adult and Pfizer kids. The doctors helped out with it where they could, but that still was far from enough.

Ray of sunshine: Everyone was incredibly disciplined. Some low level grumbling, but 100% masks, very good distances even when they had to fold lines into spaces that couldn't hold them. And hey, I got the shot. Mild reactions so far, the usual state between sleepy and hyperexcited (at once), some mild muscle aches, bit of a temperature.

And I can hear those immune cells...

"Hey, look, early Christmas dinner".
"Yay, and it's not just anything - prime quality spike protein. Dig in, there's enough for all!"
"Wait, a second, those look a bit more modern(a) than the others we had in summer. Sure those are good?"
"If you don't want to miff out, better hurry and fferffe yourffelff..."

Glad you got it! Yesterday here they removed the age restriction for getting the booster, but so far as I know are still going with the six months between shots.

Your ordeal sounds much like mine when I went for a test in the summer. Our government in its wisdom
had declared COVID over, and withdrawn much of the staff from the testing centre, so it was well over two hours in line to get tested - and that was with an appointment.

Right now over here, they're trying to boost everyone who has an arm in preparation for Omikron and that's frankly a very good idea because it will be a disaster anyway, but maybe slightly less of a disaster.

We still have relatively low Omikron figures, but that'll likely explode within the next 2 weeks, either around or shortly after new Year - the press has stopped calling it a "wave" to be expected and is now using "wall" because of exponential infection count. With roughly 6 days until the boost has full efficiency, that kind of means they want every single shot they can get by Christmas. We're seeing slightly over a million people getting shots every day (out of 81m) and if that still holds for today, we'll be at almost 40% freshly boosted and thus hopefully mostly out of the equation for severe disease.

Winter is coming.

A very vulnerable person has reported having his second booster, so fourth jab. I say that he is very vulnerable, I am talking about him being so ill with cancer that he could even be dead as I write this, I do hope not, it would be nice for his husband to at least have this Christmas with him.

I don't know when they will be offering a fourth shot to other people.

There's talk about fourth shots late spring / early summer in Germany. They wouldn't be standard boosters but rather Omikron-specific shots (if, of course that's still needed by then - at the current rates, Omikron might infect the majority of the population before that, with all consequences.)

The UK government has been pushing to get everyone (who wants it) a booster before the end of the year. Some centres are open today. I had mine, Pfizer again, some time ago. Omicron, according to the stats, appears to spread very easily but cause less severe illness. The BBC is reporting 60% of the UK population has received a booster.

It does seem less severe but not by enough to offset the transmissibility without careful measures to reduce spread. Data shows between 30% and 70% fewer hospitalizations per 1000 infected (which may also be caused by partial immunity from vaccination and prior infections so the actual effect may be less), but with transmissibility being doubled, even three weeks of unchecked spread would mean 8 times as many infected - way more than offsetting even the most optimistic virulence numbers in terms of needed peak treatment capacity.

Boosters and reasonable, intelligent contact reductions (I'm not at all saying "hole up", but rather "choose wisely and, if applicable, test and wear masks") will be key for mitigation and ultimately it depends on everyone. Stay safe and sane in these times. Cherish the contacts that mean something important to you, reduce those that aren't as important for a month or two (but be sure to give back when the situation eases off).

Those are the rules I've been following ever since I and the people closest to me got our shots. Nobody is cowering at home in fear, but outings and meetings are thought about. I'm swimming, shopping normally (I've never been a mall goer, have always avoided crowds) going to movies and restaurants in the middle of the afternoon when there's no crowd, meeting outside when possible. Masked in public, going only to place that require vax passport (except for places like grocery stores, which have limits on how many people are allowed in).

I'm lucky, I'm retired and can live this way indefinitely. It's a lot harder for people who have no choice but to go to work in busy places, or who have kids in school. Anything I can do to keep transmission rates down to make life easier for them, I'll do.

My daughter and I thought we'd go see West Side Story tonight. I've been only going to afternoon movies but I thought it would be all right, as no place was showing it as a matinee. But we got to the theatre, and even from outside the building we could see the crowds (going to see Spiderman, probably). We just looked at each other and said "I'm not going in there". When to a mostly empty restaurant for dinner instead.

I need some non-urgent but definitely medically necessary surgery, but with the Christmas/Spiderman spike that is surely coming in a couple of weeks if not sooner, added to the already terribly backlogged medical system here, looks like it's going to be at least two years. Sigh. Even if Omicron is, as it seems, less severe, if so many people get it, some at least are going to get really sick, and our hospitals are maxed right out. Again, sigh.

Our hospital has already announced cancellations of a number of elective surgeries for next week. It is staff sickness which tends to be the problem.