Covid 19 Vaccination Jabs, a New Car and an AirBnB in Skegness

It’s been a big old week for us two folks. We’ve regained our freedom, been out training, bought a car, had our first Covid 19 vaccination jabs, spent a couple of days at an AirBnB in Skegness and, wait for it, been round to mates’ for a BBQ! I suspect this blog post might be of more interest to us two looking back in the future than to you guys, but what the hell, that’s not stopped me writing anything similar in the past. :-)

Leaving Quarantine

On the morning of our 11th day in quarantine, having refreshed our email mailboxes a hundred thousand times, the emails came back from the lab to say our day 8 PCR tests were both negative. Well, mine came back first, created an exruciating few minutes of waiting for Ju. Her Day 2 test result never came back and she had been told she needed both results to leave quarantine. After raising a complaint against our provider with the test and trace organisers (they were reusing Royal Mail tracking IDs so there’s no way to know what happened to her first test) she got confirmation that because she’d done the Day 2 test, she would be free when she got a negative result for her Day 8 test. I stand by my opinion that the Day 2 and 8 test system is ‘broken’ in that multiple companies ‘backed’ by the government get very poor reviews on TrustPilot, with test kits not being delivered on time and results either being late or never delivered at all. A small sample here: Expert Medicals (who we used), DNA Workplace, LatusHealth, NowTest and 001doctor.

Before we ventured outside after our quarantine ended my Dad came round to see us. He’s had his second Covid-19 vaccinaton jab and I had just had three negative covid tests so I felt safe enough to give him a much needed and long overdue hug.

If you’re thinking of heading out of the UK, or more accurately back in again, any time soon then it makes sense to do your research carefully for your Day 2 and 8 test supplier, assuming you need these tests. A family member used an airport-based testing service (you’re allowed out of quarantine to go to the test centre) and had no problems. You might want to avoid suppliers using Royal Mail and opt for one who uses a courier. Also maybe think about one which partners with multiple labs, in case one of them gets swamped, and maybe check reviews for the lab itself if they’re available. Our top tip is pay by credit card because if it does all go wrong, you have some protection. Good luck.

Buying a Car

We haven’t owned a car for a few years now. We last had a Smart Car, which we left in our motorhome’s storage spot for a few months while we were away and when we came back it was in a sorry state, with a flat battery (we’d attached a solar panel but that didn’t help), flat front tyres and a siezed alternator. We realised leaving a car for months in the winter weather without it being used would be very bad for its health, so sold it. After that we were lucky to borrow my mother-in-law’s car while we were in the UK, handing it back each time we headed off and contributing to the running costs, but eventually rust made it unroadworthy, and it went off for the long sleep at the scrap yard.

When we bought the butcher’s shop where we currently live, we deliberately got a place in easy walking distance of a supermarket, restaurants, pubs, leisure centre, library, bus route into the city etc. This means our car use is fairly minimal and we definitely don’t need two of them. Cars are fantastic granters of freedom, and at the same time wealth destroyers extraordinaire. A quick example: if you avoided needing a second car and invested the £3,000 a year you might have otherwise spent (just a rough and ready example) but never increasing the amount invested, at a 7% annual return you’d have almost £600,000 after 4 decades. Keep going for another decade and didn’t take out anything you’d be sitting on £1.2m. This is the kind of long-term cumulative thinking which, among other approaches we describe in our book The Non-Trepreneurs, has enabled our very early retirement.

Anyway, we’re in a position where were can afford to run a car (and a motorhome) and still stay ‘retired’, so that’s what we’ve opted to do. A ton of research turned up the Hyundai i10 2013 as a great used car, but Ju fancied something with a bit more style (Ju here – somtimes in life we need to buy things with our hearts and not just what looks best on a spreadsheet). We heard of a family friend who was selling a BMW-made Mini, which I have to admit does have a lot more style, so we’ve bought it (so much for all that research!), a 2012 Mini One, which will be a fun addition to the family. My car mindset is still back in the 1990s, when I was happy if my old Mini would simply start and get me to work and back – having a car like this BMW version with its modern engine, electronics and funky dashboard is like a dream to me, no matter how old it is.

Getting our Covid 19 Vaccinations

When we set off for Spain in October 2020, we guessed Covid 19 vaccinations for our age group (45 to 49) wouldn’t be available until the end of 2021. We were wrong. The UK’s speed at innoculating its population has been, for me, astonishing, a powerful demonstration of what humanity is capable of when it gets focussed. Our invites for our first jab came while we were in quarantine, so in early April, and when we called after getting our negative PCR results (not needed for the jabs, but we needed to leave quarantine) there were plenty of slots available so we booked in for Wednesday giving us time to buy the car so we could drive ourselves to the vaccination centre.

The process itself was very slick, taking place in an old TV studio in Nottingham (where Ju was once filmed as a contestant on Catchphrase). Our details were checked several times, we were told which jab we’d get (the Astrazeneca one – we’d have been happy with any of them), questioned about any risk factors and had side effects summarised to us before being stuck with that tiny needle. The process felt almost mundane, despite the monumental effort and resources which went into making it possible. As I write over 32 million people in the UK have had their first jab and over 9 million have had two jabs.

We both felt OK the evening of the jabs, Ju even went out for a run with a few members of our local running club, but we were a bit rough the following day, like a mild hangover. 36 hours after the jab I was back out running and felt fine, although my arm still has a dull ache around the injection site a few days later. We’ve got the dates for our second jabs, so we’re free to roam the UK now (well, England and Wales at least) until we have to be back here for the next shot. There may well end up being new shots needed in the autumn to handle variants, who knows, we’ll just keep an eye on things.

Staying in an AirBnB in Skegness

My dad’s been shielding all winter and was keen to get back to his mobile home in Skegness, which re-opened on 12 April along with the other self-contained accomodation across England. This would be the first time he went back after mum’s death last November, so clearly it was going to be hard walking back in with all the associated memories, and mum’s clothes still there where she left them last autumn. He also knows lots of people on the site and knew he’d have to have the same conversation with many of them, so his excitement to be out of the house after so long locked in was tempered with a degree of very understandable reluctance, I think.

To try and help with the initial impact we booked a self-contained annex at a house in Skegness via AirBnb. A hotel room would have been cheaper, but they’re not currently legal unless you’re travelling for work or other non-leisure reasons. The appartment proved to be fantastic for us, just a short walk from the centre of Skegness but far enough away so it was quiet and there were no restrictions on road parking. It was also just a couple of miles from the Gibraltar Point nature reserve, where we went walking with dad and running later on.

Just a few days after the 12th of April easing date in England, there was a lot of life in Skegness. The shops, pubs, fast food outlets and cafes were all pretty busy on Thursday and Friday afternoons, although everything quietened off in the evenings as the sun descended and the air turned cold. By-and-large the distancing rules seemed to be being self-enforced, with long queues to sign into pubs or waiting outside chippies, but the sheer number of people on the high street made it impossible to keep 2m away from folks. We’re still getting used to folks not wearing masks outside too, after a winter in Spain where everyone wore one pretty-much everywhere.

What’s Next for Us?

The usual answer to this one: dunno. Our motorhome’s booked in for repairs tomorrow. The exhaust has snapped in two so needs sorting. We’ve also spotted that one of the pieces of rubble/rock which hit us as we left Nerja actually impacted the radiator and has dented it, hopefully not so badly it needs replacing but that needs checking. The brakes were a tad spongy on the way up England so also need fettling. Finally the front wheel bearings may or may not need replacing, we’ve no idea, they’re currently fine but are a cheap set and they’ve failed four times on that side now, so we may end up pre-emptively swapping them. Our garage here knows precisely how to fit them them, but there’s a potential spanner-in-the-works in that they’re currently unable to source OEM bearings from Fiat. We may end up just keeping the current bearings for now and doing some wandering in the UK to road test ’em, so we can be recovered home fairly easily if they do go.

And I suspect that’s what’s about to happen next: some UK-based travelling for a while, maybe until the winter or 2022 even, we really don’t know. We were very lucky to get several months out in Spain over the winter so even though we didn’t tour around over there, our wanderlust is currently well satiated. England’s campsites are bound to be busy (the Caravan and Motorhome Affiliated Club site at Winthorpe looked rammed), but we’d find places to stay I’m sure. We haven’t tried to book in anywhere yet though, we’ll spend a while at home here in Kimberley catching up with family and friends and getting some running and vehicle fettling done.

Cheers, Jay