Before all this started, I used to travel a lot and enjoyed photographing the places I visited. I was both amused and irritated (yes, I can be both simultaneously) at travellers who suffered from the compulsion of inserting themselves between their camera and what was often a spectacular view. No matter how good looking or vain the person, the effect was always to diminish not enhance the scene. I believe this is known as a selfie, the contemporary tribute to shameless narcissism.

As I like to remind my grandchildren, things are not getting better, they are getting worse: to confirm it, we now have the vaccine selfie. People are photographing themselves being injected with a COVID-19 vaccine. The preferred pose is to have the needle buried in a bare arm while the candidate smiles knowingly at the camera. What is this all about? Is it the next step in advanced virtue signalling? Is it a primitive superstition, an appeasement to pagan pandemic gods to convince them to pass over the vaccinated when the next variant sweeps the country? A type of masonic rite like rolling up your left trouser leg to welcome the initiate into the ranks of the immune?

I have no idea, but here is a good example: a vaguely familiar grossly overweight fellow who cares so much about his health that he is being Pfizered so he can go unimpeded into McDonalds for another cheeseburger.

For those who think I have lost all sense of proportion, take a look at this: CNN is complaining that their competitors have failed to display their vaccine selfies.