How to Write Flash Fiction
The one about Covid
My colleague Roger is a brilliant mathematician. Every year his pupils score 4 or 5 A* in Further Maths. He loves discoursing on probabilities.
Anyone would be excused for guessing that he’d be a staunch supporter of vaccination, but he’s agin it. The evidence is flaky, he claims. He only wears a mask when he is forced to. And obviously he refused Covid vaccination. I told him that I would not meet him for a drink until after lockdown, and he was stunned. An intelligent man like you falling for government propaganda, he sneered.
He would call me about once a week to boast that he was still Covid-free, and ask how I was.
In the meantime I have had four jabs including boosters, and gone through a dozen face covers. I kept wearing the mask long after it has become voluntary. Then after Christmas I caught it. It was a mild one, probably because of the vaccines. However, in these last three years, Roger has been fit as a butcher’s dog.
Of course I am uneasy when we meet_ and at school it is inevitable_ and when I saw him last, he cackled with laughter.
Do you admit now, he asked, that your Pfizer or Modena are dangerous? The facts of the case m’lud are crystal clear: Man A has 4 jabs and ends up with the virus, whilst Man B keeps well away from these fakes and Covid leaves him well alone. I rest my case.
W-what about the p-probabilities, I asked weakly.
