WINTER passes into Spring and it’s second jab time.

Haverfordwest instead of Tenby, same amazingly efficient and caring people.

Same upbeat and re-assuring attitude.

A senior doctor working gratis well below his pay grade performed the task on me.

“We like to be sensible,” he replied when I mentioned my wife waiting outside in the car but due for hers a week later.

So, in she came: the deed was done, saving us another journey.

But this is the joyful face of the pandemic in a county hardly hit by the predations elsewhere.

But amid our gratitude, let’s not forget those - whether patients or medical staff - suffering the virus and its many consequences.

GEOFFREY SINCLAIR,

Martletwy

Editor’s note: Mr Sinclair previously shared his experiences of having his first vaccine, back in February, at Tenby Leisure Centre.

“The Tenby Leisure Centre is a vast modern building ideally suited to its current use as an emergency Covid vaccination centre. Arriving by car from distant rural parts you follow the clear sign and turn into the one-way entrance where you are greeted by a good-humoured lady in full outdoor Covid-rig who directs you to a parking place and tells you where to enter the building by one of its rear doors.

“This opens into a vast hi-tech arena and an entrance person who checks that you have an appointment, and directs you to a reception table where all the details are logged. There is a continuous busy hubbub of background burbling. A bit like that just before the start of a symphony concert in some vast concert hall.

“You then go to two more admin stages at well-spaced peripheral desks and eventually to the queen-jabber, in the centre of the action. She is so slick that before you know it she has in what seems almost a single well-honed movement done the impressive deed. After all, when I asked her if she did it in her sleep, she didn’t deny it.

“She helps you roll up your sleeve, opens a sealed sachet, pulls out the self-contained syringe, pops it painlessly into your arm and then cleanly disposes of it in a special container. ‘Just like that’, as Tommy Cooper might have said.

“Before you have really appreciated this fusion of art and science, she calmly motions you to a row of well-spaced chairs with fellow-septuagenarians waiting for an allotted 15 minutes to de-acclimatise.

“You then try not escape before your turn and make your way to the exit door at the far end of the building - not forgetting to disinfect your chair with a wet-wipe, and dispose of it in a giant pedal-bin.

“During my deceleration period this caused me great amusement watching several not very domesticated gentlemen scrabbling at the top cover, apparently unaware of the function of a huge black rubber foot-pedal.

“Then the long walk to freedom, trying not to run, where a burly man does what can only be described as the opposite of a night-club bouncer: he opens the exit door to let you out individually. Just a bit stiff for a few hours overnight, but enough to remind you that it did actually happen and wasn’t a dream.

“So impressive, so organised, so good-humouredly efficient and ultimately so re-assuring. Thank you NHS.

“This is the first time in almost a year that I have been in any ‘social gathering’ …”