Colm O'Regan: 'I never saw so many men looking shook by the arrival of that early stage bald patch'

This week Colm got his vaccine in Dublin: "Obviously I’ll get a Cork shot for my booster. A bit like having the church wedding after the registry office."

The vaccine queue. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a queue like it. It didn’t have the hallmarks of a normal queue. I wasn’t wondering if there was another shorter queue. I wasn’t glaring at someone who looked like they had skipped the queue. I wasn’t regretting that I should have come here four hours earlier because ‘they’ll all be gone by the time I get there’.

And there was no sense that this should have been better organised and wasn’t ‘this just typical now?’ I don’t think I've ever seen a more well-oiled people-moving machine. And a special word for the ushering and directing staff who have to say the same thing to everyone without sounding like a mantra. ‘Hello my friend’ said the man at end of the third queue and it felt like he meant it.