After I debated it a long time, watched everything went on the internet, read as much as I can about it and stuff. I thought you know what, my sister had the vaccine and then she was alright. She had a few, didn’t feel very well the first, feel fine the first one the second one she didn’t feel as good but that passed, and I thought you know, I’ll just take the vaccine.

They are a lot of people, and if I’m being honest, became very hateful. I left the house in my mask which was an African print mask, just to go about five minutes from my house to my local Tesco. And people in the car shouted nasty name at me because my daughter got on the bus and walking, and people are shouting names, and that was because of the colour of the mask. The pattern of the mask is an African mask, and we’re shouted names at. “Go back to where you come from with your mask.” What has that got to do with the virus what has that got to do with, why have people suddenly became so nasty?

Because originally when it came out and they say that it was black and minority people, the first answer was my first thought was black and minority people go in hospital, are they deciding oh, pathway. Why treat them let them die? And a lot of people think like that. And I know there’s lots of people wouldn’t want to go in hospital either, because once you, once that came out they were thinking, they were going in hospital, they weren’t really treating them, they were leaving them to die. Literally. And I had a friend who mum died, and she went in hospital and she had the vaccine, she went in hospital, she had Covid, she died and you know, you talk to the kids they’ll say they didn’t treat her, why she died. You know, lots of people still believe that black people and Asian people died because they weren’t treated, okay some did, because there were lots of black people who they reckon died through Covid. And they’re thinking, they’re just left to die, because if you’re a certain age you were black, they probably look and think, why give you all this oxygen and stuff, you ain’t going to live anyhow?

And another thing is, because you couldn’t have any visitors, who the hell was going to talk for you? You know, if they’re not treating you right, who was going to say “what are you doing? What are you giving that person? What are you giving my daughter or my husband?” Who’s going to talk for you? You had no visitors, who cares? I know what it’s like in hospital, I’ve been, I was in hospital. You hear somebody calling “Nurse, nurse, nurse.” Nobody comes. You’ve got Covid, you won’t be calling anybody because you can’t talk as such, so who’s going to come? You know and, lots of black people think like that. We’re not going in hospital because you know you’re not going to treat you. Probably leave you to die, and then they say “it’s Covid.” On your death certificate it’s Covid.

My sister brought SATs machine, I had blood pressure machine, I got a temperature machine, I had cough mixtures, paracetamol, I had the West Indian ointments, the Himalayan salt, my relative in Atlanta phoned me and told me what to do to drink, to boil mint with ginger, orange juice and garlic and drink that. You name it, I had it.

And that was when my aunt used to, when my aunt phoned she said “Get somebody to get you some bay rum, it’s a bottle thing West Indian thing and use it,” she said, “and wet yourself rub yourself all over to cool yourself down.” And that didn’t, she said “if you haven’t got any bay rum, get some West Indian rum, put it in your hands, and wash your whole body with it to cool yourself down. Those were the stuff I was told to use.

I’m used to going on holiday every year, I’m used to going to London, I’m used to this time we’d normally, we’d have gone to London and do the theatres and the show. I’ve been really happy walking around Oxford Circus and all those places and you know but, I’m not doing any of that you know. I’m just not doing any of that. It felt like I’ve, I felt like I’ve sat in my house for 18 months.

Yeah so sometimes I was just hot. I felt like I was, we would use, it felt like I was burning up. Really hot, really hot so you could, everything off windows open, really really hot like my whole body would say like, your whole body feel like it on fire, that’s what we would say. Really, really hot.