I’ve been too afraid to go out without my Covid booster jab

I’m living half a life, I would occasionally think, patting my pockets for masks and hand gel, writes Jenny Eclair

How long does the jab take to kick in? (EPA)

November has been a weird one for me. As a 61-year-old AstraZeneca double-jabbed Covid-phobic, I’ve been increasingly aware of my waning immunity. Some stats report the efficacy drop of AstraZeneca to around 45 per cent – which I found extremely worrying.

I’m travelling a great deal at the moment, and the gigs I’m performing are those I’ve been waiting over a year to do. Cancelling would be a nightmare. So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been playing it very safe again and my social life has dwindled to non-existent. I’m living half a life, I would occasionally think, patting my pockets for masks and hand gel.

Then I got my booster appointment, and it felt like someone had taken their foot off the top of my head.

The experience itself last Tuesday wasn’t particularly jolly – I found myself being marched through a metal gate into a special unit round the back of my local hospital, where an inexplicably angry woman with a clipboard shouted furiously at everyone.

For a moment, I had this flashback to a time when this would have seemed the ultimate in a dystopian future fantasy. It’s strange how quickly you adapt to a pandemic reality. We all shuffled obediently into an orderly queue, waited for our names to appear on the big blue screen and accordingly disappeared into our designated numbered booths. Minutes after being summoned, I was being held in a recovery bay for 15 minutes while a nurse handed out Quality Street and stickers.

What has confused me in recent weeks is the lack of clarity surrounding how long these booster jabs take to kick in. My partner, who had his several weeks ago, was told “a couple of days” – while my nurse said 10 to 14.

A recent trial by Pfizer showed that a booster dose was extremely effective after seven days, and The Lancet also says that seven days after having any mRNA Covid-19 booster vaccine, it is 93 per cent effective.

Erring on the safe side, if I wait for 14, this means I now have just seven more days to wait until I can relax and mingle more easily without the risk of catching anything that will crash the tour.

I can’t wait! I’ve got films I want to see in actual cinemas and loads of plays to catch up on in town. Whether I’ll be ready to ditch the mask I’m not sure – so far, the only place I don’t wear my mask is when I’m on-stage... and God, I love every mask-free moment. In fact, in some respects this has been my most enjoyable tour in a career that spans 40 years, because for two hours a night (including an interval) I get to have my old life back and I am entirely and utterly happy.

For the rest of the time, my mask is glued firmly to my face – because it’s not just Covid that can screw up a tour. So far, I’ve managed to avoid the debilitating non-Covid cold that has wiped out so many people, recently. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t got off completely scot-free: one knee is hanging by a thread and my back’s gone, but that’s what happens when you attempt a cartwheel every night.

The rest of my life off-stage has been incredibly dull of late. In fact, I’ve been having about as much fun as a Faberge egg. My days are spent either at home, working and mucking about with my new lino-printing hobby, or sitting in the passenger seat of a hire car next to my similarly Covid-neurotic freelance tour manager.

John doesn’t want to catch anything either, because while I get a tour break over Xmas, he has a string of stadium stand-up dates with a very high-profile comic. After 18 months of interrupted tours, catching Covid is the last thing he needs, right now. I think people sometimes forget how precarious a freelancer’s salary is.

Inevitably, apart from getting out for the odd walk, my world has shrunk again, albeit temporarily, so it’s a good job Mother Nature has been putting on a daily floor show for me – I’ve never seen an autumn quite as beautiful as this one.

As we’ve zig-zagged up and down the UK, even the motorway views have been spectacular. Whole chunks of the British countryside are ablaze with colour. Who needs Vermont when you’ve got Gloucestershire? Everywhere you look there are carpets of gold, while the leaves left on the trees range from lime to plum.

I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed the seasons changing as much as I have since corona came blundering into our lives. Nature has been the one thing that hasn’t let any of us down, and these days I even have a favourite tree. It’s a Japanese cherry that lives around the corner from my house – in spring she’s a riot of white frilly petticoats and in autumn she’s a bonfire of orange and red. Right now, she is down to a handful of scarlet leaves and you can see the bones of her branches.

Another year is almost done and with three jabs under my skin, I hope I can safely see in a new one in a bit more style than last year.