Pill popping

‘Where are you going?’ said the nurse. ‘Guyana,’ I said. She looked blankly at me. ‘South America,’ I said, passing on information I’d only recently learned myself. ‘Next door to Venezuela.’

She got the health advice website up on her computer screen, typed in Guyana and read out the list of recommended immunisations. ‘Tetanus, hepatitis A, typhoid, yellow fever,’ she said. ‘Also advised are TB, hepatitis B, rabies, diphtheria.’ ‘But I’m only going for a week,’ I moaned. ‘Do I really have to have all of them?’ She shrugged. ‘Up to you, matey,’ she said.

I’d half-imagined that the inoculations would be compulsory. If they had been, I don’t think this nurse would have been officious about it. Searching a cluttered shelf behind her for an information sheet, she uncovered a chocolate snack bar and gave a whoop of delight. She’d been hunting for it all morning, she said. She unwrapped it and took a huge bite and we pored over the menu of inoculations.