Hubble Bubble

The modern world is leaving me behind. I've said before about paying for things with my phone. I keep meaning to but, well, I don't really see the point. It looks as though using an app to pay may be slower than taking a plastic card out of my wallet and waving it at the payment terminal. I know I'm not keeping up though. My outlook is wrong. Lots of things that are, apparently, essential, from gaming to only tucking in half of my t-shirt seem a bit pointless to me. It smacks of my dad complaining about my musical tastes. Tom Eliot put it so well in his poem Little Gidding "let me disclose the gifts reserved for age". 

It's not that I feel that dinosaur like. I know about Google lens. This morning the arty Spanish podcast I was listening to (on my noise cancelling bluetooth headphones may I add) talked about the 40th anniversary of Bob Marley's death (who I proudly admit to seeing, in concert, in London in 1976). The music that accompanied the piece was a Joe Strummer version of Redemption song. I mentioned that I'd liked the song to Maggie who often comments, one way or another, on my dotage. She suggested that a quick visit to Spotify or YouTube would soothe any unrequited musical hankerings. I knew that. The truth is though that I still tend to buy and download music rather than listening to some streaming service. I find the unreliability of mobile networks quite annoying. There's a duet version with Johnny Cash too.

Anyway. Yesterday I had a phone appointment with a doctor. She said she would write me a prescription for some medication. I asked about the process for picking up the scrip and she sounded nearly as patronising as Maggie when she answered. "I've put it on your card," she said.

Here in Valencia we have a SIP card. The initials stand for, Sistema de Información Poblacional, the Population Information System, which sounds very Big Brother to me. Although this health service card, well the phone app associated with it, can be used to make and check appointments the card is most used as identification within the health system; every time you see a doctor or a nurse, have a hospital appointment or pick up a prescription from a chemist you are asked to show the card. What I didn't know was that the doctor can tap the details of any prescription into her computer and that same information becomes available in the pharmacies. Produce the SIP card and the chemist can hand over the medicines. I don't use doctors often enough to be sure of this but I think it may be something that has been beefed up because physical appointments have become so much rarer in times of Covid. 

Just to finish off I have another old man confession. I had jobs to do in town. I had to fill the prescription but I also needed a butane bottle. Whilst I was getting the gas I bought a broom. A Macbeth type witch's broom. I hoped that it would be good for flicking the fallen mulberries to the side. You can't get much more traditional than that. I'm told it needs no recharging and works without any sort of internet connection.