Change your clocks, get your jabs and hunker down for winter - Susan Morrison

The wintery weather can only mean one thing - vaccination time

Mother Nature seems to be getting a bit menopausal, weather-wise. One minute it’s nice enough to ask yourself if you really need that big jacket for a wee dash to the shops, then the next it’s rooting through the drawers to find the thermal gloves.

Perhaps that wee warm spell tricked us, but we seem to have missed early autumn and jumped straight into the start of winter. We're missing at least half a season. It might be one of those austerity things.

This wintery weather can only mean one thing. Vaccination time, which means a trip to the desolation that is Ocean Terminal. I’ve said it before, never has a shopping destination been so well named. Terminal sums it up. Apparently there’s a revival on the horizon, with about half the building falling to the wrecking ball, but right now it's the place shops go to die.

Well, except Boots the Chemist. You’ve got to hand it to the nation's favourite purveyor of laxatives and mascara, they do tend to hang on.

On our visit to Dunoon, my old childhood haunt, the only shop still standing, open and in exactly the same spot after 50-odd years was Boots. Even pubs had shut down. If the apocalypse ever happens, we’ll be ok for food. I swear Boots will survive and the meal deal will still be available.

In Ocean Terminal, Boots is marooned. All around is a wasteland. But, at least they found a use for this ghost ship of a shopping mall. The vaccination centre is up on the second floor. The staff have a stunning view to look out over, which has got to be an improvement on the darkest days of Covid when they were stuck in that barn of a place out at the airport.

It's a doddle, as ever. My nurse was a cheery chap who did the jabbing painlessly and reminded me to drink a lot of fluid the next day, and, as he said, red or white is fine. Excellent advice. Don’t put it off.

Change your clocks, get your jabs and let's hunker down for winter.