Local languages

One disadvantage of living in a foreign country is that, often, the country you choose to live in doesn't speak a language you understand. It's one of the reasons why migrants, fleeing some terror regime, don't stop when they get to the first safe place. They keep going heading for somewhere that speaks a language they do.

Most of we rich foreigners who move here want to be good immigrants. We try to learn a bit of Spanish before we arrive. We try to learn more as we live here but, in this area, and in others, we find that a lot of the information is in a different sort of Spanish. In Pinoso, which is in the Valencian Community, it's called Valencian. Although nobody speaks Valencian directly to we foreigners we see and hear it everywhere

The current Spanish constitution says:

1) Castilian is the official language of the State. Every Spaniard has the duty to know it and the right to use it (Castilian is the language that is known worldwide as Spanish)

2) The other Spanish languages will also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities in accordance with their statutes

3) The richness of the different linguistic forms of Spain is a cultural heritage that will be the object of special respect and protection.

So Spanish, Castilian is spoken throughout Spain. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community (where the variant is called Valencian). Galician is spoken in Galicia and some areas of Asturias and Castilla y León. Basque is spoken in the Basque Country and Navarre. Aranese (a variety of Occitan which is another Southern European language) is spoken in a specific region of Catalonia.

I fully understand why people speak Valencian. It's a local language, it's the language of the land. My Yorkshire accent shows where I'm from too. But it does make life trickier for we incomers. Often it's easy enough to catch the gist of Valencian if you speak Castilian, but it makes it all harder work. I also wonder sometimes if there is a bit of exclusivity about it. Back in 2010 the Regional Government did a language survey in their territory. They found that nearly 50% of the population speaks Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (in some of the Castilian speaking areas that figure was as low as 10%) and about 25% said they write Valencian "perfectly" or "quite well" (6% in the Castilian speaking areas). There are around 50 nationalities living in Pinoso. Only one of them naturally speaks Valencian. 

The strength of feeling behind the various regional languages, Basque, Catalan etc., varies a lot in the different regions. Sometimes it's simply another language, something of local pride and heritage. Sometimes it's considered to be one of the building blocks of an independent nation downtrodden by an uncaring and power crazed Castilian speaking government based in Madrid. This is particularly reflected in schools where classes may have to be taken in the local language. Sometimes opting to take classes in Castilian might disadvantage pupils in other areas of the curriculum. It's all very complicated and the stuff of hundreds of arguments around dinner tables, on bar stools and in WhatsApp groups.

One of the manifestations of this linguistic plurality/chauvinism is in relation to local government workers - from librarians and teachers to surgeons and town hall clerical staff. Where there is a local language a public job profile usually includes a language profile. Even where the local language is not a specific requirement having it will bring quicker promotion and greater opportunity in general. In some communities nearly all the government jobs require the local language but all the communities have ways around this for the times when there are skills shortages. It can still be a huge stumbling block. 

I know someone, a health professional, who has always spoken Valencian at home but couldn't take the promotion offered to her until she had passed the official Valencian exam. As Spanish exams tend to penalise errors rather than reward knowledge, her everyday Valencian cost her points. It took her a lot of studying for her to pass the exam. Recently three Spanish nurses working in Catalonia used TikTok to complain that their careers were stalled by the need for a high level (C1) Catalan language qualification. The nurses used a very common, everyday, swear word which gave the Catalan authorities a good excuse to talk about potential disciplinary and legal action against the nurses. The Health Care chief in Catalonia said "We must guarantee care in our local language". There was no mention of their nursing skills.

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.

Using your loaf

I thought I might write a blog. Then I realised that nothing has happened to me for days so I couldn't. Later, as I pottered at some unremarkable task or another, it came to me that I knew a story, dated from the year 1305, about a Scottish bloke watching a spider. If that was enough to pique people's interest maybe I could think of something. So, here it is.

Yesterday, as I sorted the recycling in the rain, someone papped their horn as they passed the gate. Now horn papping is currently a big event in Culebrón; worthy of investigation. I duly investigated. It was a white van and our next door neighbour was buying something from the driver. I kept my distance but I wondered what he was selling. Instead of asking in person I asked via WhatsApp. First I asked a British family who live on the other side of the main road, the one where they disinfected the streets today, if they knew anything about travelling shops. When the response hadn't come within an hour or so I sent another WhatsApp to the Spanish family next door. They told me it had been a bread van coming in from Pinoso.

My search for new challenges, for novel experiences, is almost boundless. Obviously ordering bread via WhatsApp just had to be tried. Tapping out my order I suddenly realised that I didn't know the names of a particular sort of loaf I wanted. This is not new. I had the same problem in the Waitrose in Huntingdon about 20 years ago when I (apparently) wanted a Farmhouse Bloomer. This time though I couldn't point. It was a very long WhatsApp message to get an ordinary sort of loaf and a couple of breadsticks. The comparison with the bloomer still holds. "Please can I have a brown farmhouse bloomer?" versus "Please can I have that large brown crusty loaf with rounded ends and parallel diagonal slashes across its top?"

The British family responded in time. They didn't tell me about Javier the baker though, they told me about Augustine and his travelling grocer cum greengrocer's van. Bread on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, groceries on Tuesday and Thursday.

Like a magician I revealed all of this to Maggie. Well a van from Carrefour (a huge French owned supermarket) passed the other day she said. There seems to be just so much that I don't know about shopping in Culebrón!

And something completely different to finish. I was talking yesterday to a bloke who lives in a nearby village called Cantón. The official figure for the population of el Cantón is 103 but I'd be amazed if that many people actually live there all year around. Nonetheless my pal says that in the village, as nearly everywhere in Spain, every evening at 8pm the neighbours get out on their balconies and back patios to applaud, shout and generally make noise to show their support for the people keeping us going at the moment and particularly the health workers. I'm sure it happens in Culebrón too but we're too far away to hear or be heard.

Heart in the small talk

I'm a sucker for gestures. The bit in Casablanca, where Laszlo says "Play the Marseillaise, play it!" and Rick nods, and they do, and they out-sing the baddies always makes me tear up.

I was just watching a video of someone called Gustaf Farwell banging out Nessun Dorma from his balcony in Barcelona just like Gavinana Maurizio Marchini did in Florence. Every time I watch the TV news I see health workers applauding patients coming off ventilators, I see the people clapping to cheer on the lorry drivers, health workers and everyone else who is keeping us going. It's good and positive. I even approve of the glossy videos being put together by the banks and supermarkets so that we identify them with the white hats when the time goes back to shopping and opening accounts. Lots of gestures.

I'm not so keen on the complaining. Complaints are often justified, I enjoy a good complain myself, I complain a lot, there are plenty of daft buggers in the world and plenty of stupid processes to complain about. The problem is that picking fault with everything and everyone isn't really that useful as it's happening and unless there's something to be done about it.

I had a headteacher when I was at secondary school who was as stupid and as pompous a little man as you could ever wish to meet. He did, though, habitually defend (what was then) British Rail with what I considered was a sound argument. It's all well and good, he said, complaining when the points freeze and the trains are thrown into chaos for a couple of days every February and pointing out that in Sweden they have heated points but the truth is that the conditions are different, the situation is different and if British Rail did spend millions on installing heated points then someone would point out the waste of money.

It does seem to me that, once the game is on the best you can do is the best you can do. Obviously when it's all over you can do a bit of finger pointing and calling to account. Maybe things can be improved so that next time the mistakes are different ones. In the meantime I'm all for the gestures of solidarity. To the politicians trying to do their best, to the health workers being forced to manufacture protective clothing from bin bags, to the volunteer food deliverers, to the celebrities giving money, to the people sewing masks or using their 3D printers to produce ventilators, to the cleaner in the old people's home who has decided to stay on, to the singing and non singing police officers and to those people who can't do those things so instead they organise an online yoga session, dress up as dinosaurs on the balcony, shout Happy Birthday across the street or make uplifting YouTube videos.

But I never do have the time

Do you know that Louis XVI wrote Rien, French for nothing, in his diary, on the day the Bastille was stormed? That was 14th July 1789, one of the key days in the French Revolution and one of a series of events that would lead to Louis losing his head. If you do know you'll probably be aware that it was an entry in his hunting diary, to record the number of animals he'd caught, but it's a better story if you miss that bit out.

My diary for yesterday could say nada, Spanish for nothing, though without any reference to the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Well not really nothing. I drank several pints of tea. In fact I'm drinking so much tea at the moment that I've stopped flushing every time because our cess pit only has a capacity of 2,000 litres and we could well fill it really quickly if this quarantine continues.

Reading too. Actually the two things go together, drinking tea, sitting close to a gas heater and reading. I nearly always have a book on the go but normally it takes me a couple of weeks to finish one, maybe longer. I'm on my second since we've been in confinement and I read about 100 pages yesterday. For me that's a lot. It looks as though my new Javier Cercas book is going to last me four days though it's possible I might knock it off today, day three. I probably have a book, a book with paper pages, waiting for me at the newsagent in Pinoso but, at the moment, five kilometres is a long, long way. Thank goodness for Kindle.

Watching the news too. That's become a key activity. The 3pm news on one channel and the 9pm new on another. The bit I enjoy best are the little uplifting stories. Normally I'm more of a radio man and "newspaper" man. I usually listen to the radio, live or as podcasts, as I do those household jobs or drive from one place to another but I only seem to be listening to the radio in the morning at the moment. It seems odd considering that I have more dead time. That could be because the heavy rain of the last few days has kept me out of the garden and weeding and listening go so well together. It's the same with reading news. I've kept up my consumption of Spanish news in written in English but reading Spanish news in Spanish has definitely tailed away.

Evenings it's Netflix, Amazon Prime and broadcast telly but a lot less than I would have expected. I have joined Maggie in watching the British News though which is something I don't usually bother to do.

Occasionally, I pull out the little book that I use to write down new Spanish words and I have a few minutes trying to unsuccessfully memorise that new vocab. Twitter and Facebook and WhatsApp are there all the time. I still haven't worked out Twitter properly, following threads can be very difficult, but I've been using it quite a lot over the past eleven or twelve days. Facebook meanwhile is full of rules and regulations and information from Town Halls and police but there are even more cute animals, clever quotes and hoaxes than usual. More hoaxes than anyone could imagine. I noticed that I was getting the same hoaxes in English yesterday as I've been getting in Spanish for days.

You will notice there are no chores, no jobs around the house, no catching up with painting. Thank goodness that hasn't changed.

And, blogging of course. Even though I've nothing to write about.

Surprisingly unsettling

I've just been into town.

There's a video doing the rounds on social media of a woman runner scuffling with a couple of police officers in Madrid. We don't see how it started but the woman is screaming blue murder and shouting for help. The comments on the sound track by the person taking the video and from the neighbours on the adjoining balconies are not supportive of the runner. A loose translation might be something along the lines of "Smart arse, you should have stayed at home - you twat".

We're fine in Culebrón. We have space, inside and out, there are only the two of us plus the clowder of cats. Since I went to the supermarket on either Monday or Tuesday I haven't been outside the front gate. The time has passed quickly though and I'm not finding time to do enough reading despite apparently having endless days in front of me.

I see on the telly, hear on the radio and read in social media that, in Spain, the place where I live, people are facing the hard times with determination and with humour. The examples of moral support, such as the applause for hard pressed medical staff or the concern for the lorry drivers who are keeping us all going but can't get a cup of coffee or anything to eat along their route, are legion. There are almost endless examples of good, decent action like shoe workers turning their machines to sewing medical masks. Not everything is positive though. There are plenty of selfish people too. Runners seem to be right up there and I've seen lots of Facebook posts from local police forces reminding people to be civically minded and to comply with spirit of the current rules. A simple example is that people are choosing to get their bread from a baker on the other side of town as the cover for a bit of a stroll. There are examples of lock ins in bars and I just saw a video (photo on this post) of the traffic jams out of Valencia city on Friday evening as people headed for their "holiday homes" content to risk taking the virus with them and happily flouting the one person per vehicle instruction. There are still some politicians crass enough to think that now is also a good time for point scoring.

I know which side I want to be on. But we had no eggs, bread, tomatoes, peppers or juice and our alcohol stocks were down to strangely coloured liqueurs and the wine in plastic bottles. The cats also seem to have remarkably healthy appetites.

Shopping aside there were a couple of other reasons for leaving the house. One of the things I've found time for over the last couple of days was to sort through my old English teaching materials looking for stuff to throw out. That had added about 20 kilos of paper to the usual recycling stash of cans, cartons and bottles sitting by the front door. Just to top it off Amazon were threatening to take my order back out of their delivery locker if I didn't pick it up by Sunday. The just about justifiable reasons for a quick trip out were building.

I chose to go out for the supermarket dead time just after 2 pm. It was a good decision. The rainswept roads were almost deserted and there was easy parking just outside the supermarket. I didn't have to queue to go in and I got my handwash and plastic gloves within seconds of entering. It was really quiet and nearly everything was in stock. I didn't like it though. It was all a little unsettling. When all this started I was one of the "well the flu kills 35,000 people every year and nobody notices" crowd  but I found myself hanging back whilst someone in front of me moved on from the area of the shelves where I wanted to be - no point in being foolhardy. It's impossible to go anywhere in Pinoso without bumping into someone you know. There were pals and acquaintances in the supermarket but the conversations were nothing more than polite or humorous exchanges of a few phrases. I have to say that I felt really uncomfortable; a mixture of concern that I was doing wrong by being there and that I was putting myself and Maggie at unnecessary risk.

I did all my jobs without any complications of any sort but I was really quite pleased when I closed the front gate and got to wash my hands.

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Talking to a couple of people on the phone back in the UK I've realised that people there are unaware of the restrictions here in Spain. This list is not exhaustive and it's not official but I think it gives the basic scope of the restrictions.

During the validity of the state of alarm, people may only circulate along the roads or spaces for public use to carry out the following activities. They must be carried out individually, unless accompanied by persons with disabilities, minors, the elderly, or for any other justified reason.

1. to buy food or other primary necessities, or to get prescription medicines from the pharmacy
2. to visit medical facilities in case of urgency
3. to go to your workplace or to carry out labour, professional or company duties
4. to return to your habitual home
5. to visit banking or insurance institution
6. to assist and care for the elderly, minors, dependants, people with disability or especially vulnerable people
7. for reasons of overwhelming force or situation of necessity
8. for any other activity of an analogous nature duly justified
9. to walk your pet (close to home and quickly)
10. to fill your vehicle up with fuel.

All retail businesses are closed the exception of those selling food, beverages, basic necessities, pharmacies, those offering medical, orthopaedic, optical or veterinary services, those selling newspapers, petrol or hygienic products, technological and telecommunications equipment, those offering telecom services, those selling animal feed products, dry cleaners, launderettes, hairdressers for health related home visits, E-commerce or commercial activities by phone or mail. Vehicle workshops may also open

All "food serving" businesses are closed: Tabernas y bodegas, Cafeterías, bares, café-bares. Chocolaterías, heladerías, salones de té, croissanteries. Restaurantes, autoservicios de restauración and similar. Bares-restaurante. Bares y restaurantes de hoteles, except when providing services for their guests. Salones de banquetes. Terrazas.

Museums, discotheques, auditoriums, sports facilities, attraction parks, leisure activity centres, processions, popular fiestas are all closed or cancelled.

Attendance at places of worship and at civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals are possible only if  there is no crowding and people can be kept at least a metre apart.

Out to play

I like to get out and about. Anything from a film to a fiesta, a gallery to a concert, the theatre and, occasionally, even sports events. Doing things suits me. On the other hand in the last seventeen years I have had a couple of short stays in hospital - one in the UK and one here. Much to the surprise of those around me I quite enjoyed those brief medical sojourns.

So far I'm finding the same with being confined to home. I'm not longing to go for a walk or ride the bike or sit in a bar or even go to the pictures. The situation has changed and I'm being told that the best thing for me, and more particularly for everyone else, is that is that I stay at home; so stay at home it is. That said I did go out today. We needed food.

Culebrón itself is festooned with police tape to seal off the public spaces which I noticed as I passed through the village to drop off the recycling. Pinoso, our town, was quiet. Not dead quiet but quiet. I parked without any difficulty outside the bank and by the supermarket. I did have to queue to get in the supermarket but only for five minutes or so. One of the staff was on hand to ensure we maintained a "safe" distance and when someone came out someone else could go in. The free gift on entry was a squirt of alcohol based handwash. The buying looked absolutely normal to me. People were comparing prices and ingredients, nobody was shovelling products into their basket/trolley and most of the shelves were full. I couldn't get mince for the chilli nor butter for my toast and I wondered if that was because of us Britons. Spaniards do use both products but nowhere near as much as we do. By the checkouts there was parcel tape on the floor to remind shoppers to maintain a distance. The only incident of any kind was that there was one chap buying fruit or veg who wasn't using plastic gloves. Someone from the store pointed this out to him and he was less than polite in his response.

Obviously my situation is very straightforward. I don't have the virus, so far as I know, and nobody I know has it either. So far all the dead are just statistics to me. More prosaically I'm not having trouble getting to work, my kids are not at home all the time, my mortgage is paid, I haven't had to close down my business, my income is relatively secure and so on. For some people this sudden stop must be throwing up all sorts of problems and heaven knows what the long term effects will be.

But for an old, fat, English bloke this week's idea of getting out and about was dropping off the recycling, going to the cash machine and the supermarket.

Everyday life

It's really strange. Nothing much has changed and yet everything is very different.

I'm sure you know that Spain is in a "State of Alarm". Basically what that means is that Central Government has taken special powers for itself for the next fortnight at least. In effect Central Government can change the usual rules. Lots of those things would have happened anyway but the response is now more coordinated. For instance where we live the Valencian Government had already decided to close nurseries, schools and universities but with the Central Government now in charge that sort of closure has been made uniform across the country. The general principles of the measures are easy to understand. Close all of the places where there are usually lots of people (day centres, schools, parks, theatres, restaurants, fiestas), tell people to stay at home, try to keep the economy ticking over, keep basic services open (food shops, chemists, petrol stations), limit travel and when travel is necessary ensure that it is a solitary affair. The more governmental "curfew" type things include putting lots of police and the less militarised parts of the army (the emergency response section) on the streets, requisitioning supplies of things like masks and hand wash and making it possible for the health authorities to draft in extra help like nearly qualified medical students and private medical staff if they need to.

I have been in equal measure amused and ashamed reading the comments of my compatriots on the Spanish Facebook page of the Citizens Advice Bureau. So much of it is patronising, bellyaching and thinly veiled anti Spanishness. Several of the entries are of the "Look how smart I am" variety. An example. "So, if you can only travel one in a car and neighbours can't visit each other does this mean that single carers will have to leave their children unattended at home when they go out for food?". There are, though, plenty of genuine questions and real problems "My sister looks after our dad's medication, she knows what he needs and why and she collects his meds every month from the chemist but she doesn't drive and I don't know enough about his medical history to do it myself. Can I give her a lift?". For this type of question I think it would be really difficult for anyone to give an answer, especially as taxis are still in business (with rules about disinfection) but I am 99% certain that if the woman were stopped in such a situation then the police or whoever would be appreciate the genuineness of the case. Then again there are lots of examples of people who were moving home today, who are camping in the remains of a packed up house, and where the removal companies have said that they are not allowed to work. No flexibility there and probably quite rightly even if it does seem hard.

The old fashioned sources of information - radio, telly and newspapers are keeping us informed about the bigger picture and they have turned Fernando Simón into the sort of media star that Ian McDonald was in the UK during the Falklands War. On the other hand the stuff coming via WhatsApp and Facebook is notable for its mix of mischief making, point scoring, genuine information and heroic or heart-warming kitten type stories vaguely related to viral infection. I can't really tell you what it's like out there because we are not going anywhere and where we are there are very few other people. If we were in a city or town we may notice that there was no traffic, we could join in the applause for the medical services or even sing the Spanish version of "I will survive" from our balconies. Out here, in Culebrón, hardly anyone passes our door and I had to stand on top of the old water deposit to see if there were traffic on the main road (that's what I did for the photo at the top next to this post). Anyway it's drizzling today and a bit miserable so it's a good day to drink tea and read books.

I had intended to walk the recycling to the bin but now I'm thinking that it might be more responsible to wait until I need to go in to town and do the recycling and shopping together. Then again I'm not that sure about going in to town. We do need some things and I have no money in my wallet but I'm sure we can manage a couple of days more before hitting the cash machine or replacing our depleted supply of potatoes, thyme and tinned tomatoes.

And good luck to my sister and brother in law who were in Spain on Saturday in their motor home and decided that they would be better off in the UK. Not far to go now but maybe you should stay at home for a while once you get there!

Round midnight

It was just after ten and I was putting away my paperwork at the end of the class when a WhatsApp message pinged on my phone. It said that Maggie was helping a couple of friends out with a bit of a medical emergency. One of them was having trouble breathing and, at the local health centre, they needed someone who understood Spanish. Maggie stepped into the breach.

Later it was decided to transfer the ill person to the nearby hospital in Elda for tests and what not. We ended up going too and so, around midnight, we found ourselves hanging around in the Urgencias, the Accident and Emergency of the local hospital. Nobody was watching the telly high on the wall, someone was throwing up on the pavement outside, the drinks and snack machines were doing a slow but constant trade. The main activity though was waiting; staring at mobile phones or talking in small groups. Nobody looked rich, nobody looked well dressed, one woman was even in her dressing gown and nightie - when things happen quickly I don't suppose there is time to spruce yourself up. Quite a few of the men were in shorts despite it only being 11ºC.

It reminded me of so many places with old plastic chairs or faded and lopsided posters on the walls, dole offices for instance, but, more than anything, it brought to mind my occasional overnight coach trips from Petrer to Madrid and on to Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo. A motorway service station and an A&E waiting room when the world has slowed down for the day are surprisingly similar places.

No particular news on our pal as I write- stable but not fixed.

Breathing Space

A pal had to go to accident and emergency yesterday. He was having trouble breathing and he suspected he had something lodged in his windpipe. He asked me to go as a translator. Perhaps his difficulty in breathing had clouded his judgement!

He was seen by a doctor inside about 15 minutes of arrival. He was taken to a cubicle with a bed after that first consultation. There were a couple of routine tests, blood samples, blood pressure, temperature and whatever it is they do when they put electrodes on your chest, hands and legs to get one of those wiggly line graphs. A few minutes later and he got a chest X-ray and then he was shifted onto an observation ward. Somebody came to do the blood pressure and temperature stuff again. This time they were a bit worried about the oxygen levels in his blood so they fastened him up to oxygen administered through one of those clip in the nostril jobs. Then it all slowed to a crawl.

The patient wasn't. He thought they were taking ages and not doing much. Impatient rather than patient. I thought it seemed pretty good. Presumably someone was looking at the various tests and deciding what to do. We'd been there about four hours, a bit less maybe, when I had to go to get to work. Before I went, they told me that my chum would be moved to a room and that they would have a look for the obstruction the next morning. I got a WhatsApp this morning from him to say that they'd taken some food out of his windpipe today.

The lunctime TV news reported that eight out of ten Spaniards are very happy with the service they get from the Spanish health system. Their main complaint is that the waiting times are too long between GP and specialist at around a month. I'd go along with the 80%.

It's my arm doctor

As I remember it the, "it's my arm doctor" quote was some sort of running joke. It had to be delivered with a broad Scots accent. Something to do do with the housekeeper, Janet, from Dr Finlay's Casebook.

If you have any idea what I'm talking about then you'll be old. In turn that probably means you see the doctor more frequently than you would like. Our Saturday morning coffee group is a right little hot bed of knee replacements, cataracts, stomach protectors, heart bypasses, pain relief and epileptic fits. Actually, until I fell over frothing at the mouth, having bitten off large chunks of my tongue, I felt a bit out of the conversation. Obviously I go to the doctor's from time to time but the visits have been thankfully few and far between.

Yesterday I helped a pal with his visit to the doctor. The idea was that, as I speak a few more words of Spanish than he does, I could act as a sort of translator. It wasn't that difficult. A couple of questions from the white coated doctor, a bit of tapping on the computer and out of the office in under three minutes with a prescription and an order for a blood test.

Today it was my turn. Three months since my "event" and I had a follow up visit with the neurology department at Elda Hospital. "Right oh", said the white coated doctor, (all doctors in Spain wear white coats as far as I can see. It's like British doctors have stethoscopes though one must be easier to wash and cheaper than the other.) "the electroencephalograph is clear, anything to tell us?" - I complained about a few aches and pains but said basically no. She was nice about my Spanish and she gave me the alta, the up, the opposite of the baja, the down, the equivalent of a sick note. No more treatment, no more check ups, free to drive. In the clear more or less, with certain provisos, given that collapsing in a supermarket is not a sign of robust good health.

Speaking to people about their experiences with the Spanish health system  brings a mixed bag of responses. The few times I've used them they seem to have been first rate but not everyone agrees. I'm a great believer in normal distributions, the idea that most systems are made up of the reasonably competent with far fewer poor or excellent performers. I have no complaints about the health care I've received at all. In fact I would rate it as cracking.

It was strange. Going to the local surgery yesterday I asked someone how the system worked. It was really simple but I didn't know until I asked. Today, at the hospital, I walked in to the outpatients area and there were hundreds of people sitting on hundreds of chairs. I hadn't the faintest idea where to go or what to do. The woman I asked on Patient Services was dead helpful. She rang to check I was booked in and then walked me to the chairs by the right department. Once I was settled in I realised that the people were clustered around various areas - gynaecology or cardiology or whatever. The system was crystal but to me it initially looked chaotic. As I waited I noticed that there were other people as lost as me, people asking others how the system worked, whilst others, who knew the routine, were like fish in water. I suppose we humans learn routines very quickly.

I had a similar sort of thought as I was leaving. In the entrance area there were all sorts of people from lottery ticket sellers and the people who run the various stalls and stands to the hospital staff and habitual attendees - the  accustomed regulars and the lost novices. It was gratifying to think that, at least for the while, I can number myself amongst the bewildered and lost.

Minor celebrity, cycling and house visiting

Another couple of personal tales. If you're looking for stories of Spain skip this one.

Thrashing around on a supermarket floor must attract quite a reasonable sized crowd - something for any balloon sculpting street artists among you to bear in mind. At least two people have told me they were personally responsible for picking me up and several more seem to have been interested onlookers. Even the local police chief asked me today how I was getting on. Lots of people know about the incident and they seem to know it was me. In fact, at times, I've felt like a bit of a minor celebrity. It's a celebrity I would rather have avoided but, every cloud, as they say.

There is medical advice that I shouldn't drive. So now I can feel virtuous cycling from Culebrón to Pinoso. It's not very far, it's more or less level and yet the effort makes me breathe like an steam train. Nonetheless, as I take my first unsteady steps on reaching my destination I feel righteous. Ecologically sound, part of that group that goes into sports shops to buy things other than shoes.

Getting to town or back home on the loaned road bike is already a relatively quick and only mildly painful process. I expect it to get better as my muscles adapt to something more strenuous than pushing the brake or clutch pedals. The bike is useless for transporting anything other than me of course. I've already had a couple of logistical failures with my lessons when the attempt to keep the weight and angularity of my backpack down has meant that I've forgotten some key bits of paper. My lunchtime menu planning/food buying now also takes account of the weight and bulk of foodstuffs. Night time cycling is out (though much against my better judgement I rode home after nightfall yesterday). I was not and I am not at all keen on mixing with 100km/h traffic after dark but it was actually the oncoming traffic, on the narrow lanes, that caused me most problem as I lost sight of the edge of the road.

As a driver I think those flashing red rear bike lights are great but, as a cyclist, I've had a couple of eye to eye conversations with drivers in broad daylight where there has been no doubt that each of us is aware of the presence of the other. They've cut me up anyway. They are  presumably working on the assumption that, even if I persist, I will hardly mark their paintwork. I am certain that even the flashiest of flashing rear LEDs and the most fluorescent of fluorescent jackets will offer very little protection against just the slightest tap from a vehicle driven by someone much more engrossed in their WhatsApp message than spotting that unexpected night time bike.

When I rode in a couple of days ago I was heading for the bank to talk mortgages and I thought we were just about to buy a house. I was quite taken with the idea. Culebrón is great with space and trees and stuff but it's a pain getting a gas cylinder or a bread stick. And, as the years pass, more things will become a nuisance or worse. So, living in town and being able to leave the gas cylinder outside the door to be replaced or only having to walk around the corner to the bakery sounded good. Pinoso is hardly the big city after all and Friday evening's jaunt to Santa Catalina, where we talked to Spaniard after Spaniard, was also a reminder of the pleasures of living with neighbours in a community.

Maggie knew the house or, in fact, the bunch of houses we were going to see. I reckoned that if she thought they were good then they would be. The houses are owned by a bank, collected as part of a bad debt, probably from a bankrupt builder, and sold through the bank's real estate arm. The prices are low, and similar houses are usually really good value for money. Typically they are "sold as seen" and most of them need a bit of tweaking in one way or another. We're not really rich enough to take on a mortgage but figures can be remarkably elastic when you want them to be and the bank seemed to be as flexible in their sums as we were in ours.

I was ready to having to fit a kitchen from scratch, I knew about that, but, try as I might I couldn't like the house. I looked at the cupboards, described as rooms, and wondered how anybody had decided to make the only suitable length for a bed run from under the window directly into the door. I looked at the toilet absolutely flush to the wall, wondered why, and tried to calculate if there was sufficient leg space between the stool and the bidet without actually squatting down to check. I balanced everything against the price and decided that sometimes being cheap just isn't enough.

A weekend in Elda Hospital

It must have been the price of the cat food in the Día supermarket that triggered it. I was there picking up a few essentials before going out for lunch. My eyes went funny, as though each one was switching on and off at random, and the next thing I know is that I didn't know much.  I didn't know where I was. I was confused. It took the ambulanceman to explain that I had passed out and they were about to take me to Elda hospital and only later did I remember the detail of the strange visual effects. I wonder how much disruption I caused in Día and whether I'll ever be able to shop there again?

Maggie turned up at the ambulance not long after. She wasn't with me in the supermarket so my guess is that the emergency number strip on the lock screen of my mobile phone did its job. The police found it and were able to contact her. My second guess is that the description given of my sack of potatoes impersonation in the supermarket to the 112 emergency dispatcher meant that he or she sent a specialist ambulance with a doctor on board but, when the crew found me basically recovered, they transferred me to a less specialist ambulance for transfer to hospital. Apart from thinking on my own mortality on the journey to the hospital, I've often suspected that I will not reach a ripe old age, the journey was uneventful.

It was pretty routine in the hospital too. They dressed me in one of those funny back opening gowns, checked my heart, did a CT scan and a couple of x-rays as well as taking blood samples and then wheeled me off to an observation ward with lots of beds where they hooked me up to a drip. Maggie sat with me. Her poor friends, denied their promised posh meal, camped out in the waiting area of the hospital. Not long after they moved me to the Neurology ward to a room I was to share with Pepé. He was having a lot of trouble breathing and they had some machine pumping oxygen to his lungs. I would have found out more but my Spanish collapsed completely. I could not utter a single coherent sound and I was soon much more concerned about my Spanish than I was about whatever was supposed to be wrong with me.

I lay in my bed and every now and then someone would come and take my temperature, my blood pressure and check my blood sugar levels - there was even a 6am raid for some serious blood samples. The results and readings were always normal and, apart from a quite nasty headache, which still hasn't completely gone, and a general weakness when I started to try to move around I felt absolutely fine. In fact I began to feel a bit of a fraud. As I settled in, and as they let me exchange the gown for pyjamas, the food started to arrive - dinner, breakfast, no elevenses though, lunch, afternoon snack and back to dinner. The food wasn't great and they had a particularly tasteless line in soups cum gruels but I thought it was good that they fed me at all. The food and the constant stream of nurses, cleaners and auxiliaries were a break in the routine of lying there, trying to listen to a podcast that I found much, much harder than usual to understand. I finished my book, La uruguaya by Pedro Mairal but I was hard pressed to follow even the gist of the last few pages and as to understanding what the string of visitors were saying to Pepé's wife I had absolutely no idea. When I did utter a few words to try to be pleasant people would just stare at me blankly and uncomprehendingly. I soon limited myself to weak smiles and multilingual grunting.

Visitors can stay with people in Spanish hospitals all the time and there is probably an expectation that someone will be there to do a bit of the caring for a patient. Pepé's wife, Ana, stayed with him overnight and through the morning though someone, usually a daughter, came and took the midday shift so that Ana could go home and get changed and get something to eat. She was back by the early evening to take over again. Maggie came to see me and she would have stayed too but I shooed her away. I was able to feed myself, straighten the bed etc. and, when I was given the say so, go and get a shower. I saw absolutely no point in both of us being confined to barracks. The permission to get a shower came from a doctor who came to see me on Monday morning. You don't have a tumour, you didn't have a stroke, you don't have diabetes and it wasn't a heart attack so now we're going to do a resonancia. I supposed, though I never asked, that they were looking for signs of a fit or epilepsy. In the meantime, said the doctor, feel free to get out of bed, sit in the armchair and have a shower.

And that's what happened. No breakfast for me on Tuesday, en ayunas, fasting, and then off for an MRI scan. Into one of those tunnel things with quite a loud noise. I thought it would be horrid but, in the end, it was just boring. I asked how long it had taken when I came out and the answer was 25 minutes. About an hour later the doctor came to see me again. The resonancia found nothing, we can't find anything, all we can think is that it's your lifestyle - too much alcohol, to much smoking - so cut it out and be good. Now you can go home. I did flick to the last page of the medical report they gave me and it said not to drive for six months. I asked someone on the desk what this meant. It's all a recommendation she said and that's where we left it. Not being able to drive would be a serious blow for someone living in Culebrón.

They looked after me well. They came and got me in the first place. They treated me quickly. They found me a bed. They spent presumably large amounts of money on trying to find out what was wrong with me and they gave me food to eat, clean sheets and pyjamas to wear. I am so glad that I demanded legal contracts so many times from so many employers so I had a right to that healthcare.

Just as I was writing this I've been trying to decipher the medical report. Even if my Spanish were brilliant I don't think that I could understand it but it seems to cover all the things they said I didn't have. The big thing is that I had convulsions - Wikipedia equates those with epilepsy. Alcohol and tobacco use are also highlighted and the last line says chronic small vessel ischaemia (in Spanish) which Wikipedia tells me is basically a mini stroke. Maybe it's a bit belt and braces - we didn't find anything but it could have been any of these.

Well, at least this time. I got to blog about it.

Doctor, doctor

I know that the NHS, the British healthcare system, is a politically hot topic nowadays and I suspect there have been several changes to it since I left but, for someone who lived in the UK till 2004, the Spanish healthcare system and the British ones are basically similar.

The main difference is that you have to have paid into the Social Security system, or be the dependant of someone who has, if you are to get anything out of the Spanish system. Emergencies are always treated - though I'm not sure whether there might be a corresponding bill afterwards if you haven't contributed. Pensioners from any EU country are covered by the system here but the payment actually comes from the home country.

Dentistry is not included in the Social Security cover and there is a system of charging for prescriptions with various discounts which take account of your age, any disabilities and income but, in general, get sick and paramedics, nurses, doctors and an impressive array of medical hardware will come to your aid.

I've not been a big user of the system. An infection here and an injury there but the last time I spent any time at a doctor was in Cartagena four or five years ago. I have this idea that I can tell when it's something serious and when it isn't so, most times, I just wait for the malady to disappear and, touch wood, up to now there has been nothing serious.

Pinoso, as you know, is a really a village, rather than a town. A few souls short of 8,000. Nonetheless, it has 24 hour emergency medical cover. Our health centre is modern and operates at full swing on weekday mornings and early afternoons and then has a quieter afternoon/evening session. I don't actually know the opening hours but I know the principle well enough.

The last time I went to the doctor was on a Saturday afternoon when there is a just a skeleton, out of hours, staff on call. My stomach had been painful for a long time and the pain didn't seem to be going away and I didn't like it. Finally I was persuaded to go to the doctor in "emergency" hours. The doctor laughed, gave me something akin to imodium and sent me on my way. I felt suitably foolish.

Regular readers will know we have a couple of newish house cats and a visiting street cat  - a big white job. Having tried to scare him away we have now taken to trying to feed him so much that he leaves our two alone. A risky strategy I know. He is grateful for the food though. He goes into a frenzy as the food approaches and chows down in a noisy and very animated way. Tonight as I gave him a handful of the dried food he bit me. Nothing serious, he just mistook me for chicken flavoured biscuits, but he got a clout on his backside in retaliation.

An hour later and my hand was feeling very strange, A sort of pins and needles. I've heard about cat bites. A friend was very close to losing his finger after a bite from the family pet. Once again I rang on the out of hours bell at the health centre. Once again I was treated as a sort of idiotic time waster. They gave me a tetanus jab and told me to go back tomorrow if my hand swells up but basically they were miffed that I'd interrupted whatever it was that they were watching on the telly.

It's excellent that we have the emergency service though. Even if they do laugh at me.

Toodle Pip

I got up early this morning to check the result and, rather as I'd feared, the UK had voted to leave the Union. I wasn't in the least surprised but I was shocked.

To me, on a day to day basis, at the moment it means very little. My only real concern is about the exchange rate. I get a pension paid in sterling. As the pound loses ground against the euro I get fewer euros to spend for the same number of pounds. Of course, when the two years and three months are up, then I suppose I'll have to relearn Fahrenheit and furlongs but at least I will be able to recover my blue passport, rest assured that a cucumber is a vegetable and eat curved bananas till the cows come home.

The concerns of  expats of my age are mainly around health care and pensions. Reciprocal arrangements within the EU mean that pensioners get free medical care in Spain and there is no problem with the UK state pension being paid here with all its rights intact. In all likelihood something reasonable will be hammered out between the UK and Spain over the next couple of years and those of us who have been out of the UK for a while will find we have some sort "grandparent" rights. 

Of course there is nothing to stop the UK Government going the other way and denying we expats all sorts of things that are currently considered as rights. The Spaniards might also be mean to us when we no longer have citizenship. We already lose the right to vote in the UK if we stay away too long so why not take away other benefits? "You've been out of the UK for 10 years? No healthcare for you then my lad - and as for benefits". In 1981 dear old Maggie changed the status of lots of people who had always considered themselves British. There's no reason at all why somebody, in the future, should not do the same to the likes of me. And the Spaniards used to tax Britons more than nationals when, for instance, we sold a house. In a couple of years that could well be back on the books.

If you start to think about the number of things that have a European tinge to them, from the CE safety mark and Erasmus students through set aside for farmers and low priced mobile phone roaming or maybe the blue channels at your holiday destination then, I don't envy the poor sods who have to try to piece it all back together over the next twenty seven months.

It's strange that on the day that expat healthcare in the EU is in doubt  I went to a hospital to visit a British friend. He's had a heart incident. He is in the new hospital down in Elche. I've seen the inside of lots of Spanish hospitals for one reason or another, but it's the first time I've been on the wards. In fact it wasn't a ward, it was a private room with telly and internet (though that cost 4€ per day). In the hour or two we were there two doctors came in to see the patient and both of them spoke English. We had one cleaner and two nursing auxiliary types also pop in to do this or that and all but the cleaner spoke to us in English too. The story of the treatment sounded quick and professional. All in all I suspect that our friend is in safe and professional hands. I should mention that the hospital expects that our friend has somebody at his bedside to deal with those little things all the time. If he needs a crash cart that's the hospital's job but if he needs his pillows fluffing or help getting his slippers on then that's a job for the patient's friends or family. I wonder if the hospital will still be there for me in two years and three months when I have a heart incident?

Oh, and one last thing. If you voted to leave the EU because you had concerns about its structures or funding then fine - I don't agree with you but a reasoned argument is a reasoned argument. On the other hand, if, as I suspect, you voted to leave the EU because of immigration, floods of people coming to take our jobs, classrooms full of children who can't speak English and a terrible strain on the NHS from foreigners then I think you're xenophobic at the least and probably a raging racist bigot.

Vile bodies

People tell me they are never swayed by advertising. Not me; I see an ad for something that looks useful and I'm there. That spray to stop the water stains on the glass shower screen, for instance, is great.

I saw an advert for some stuff to stop fungus growing on your toe nails. I hadn't realised that I had fungussy feet till I saw the advert. Gross. I just thought it was, well something else. So adverts are informative too. My feet and hands tingle a lot, it's not exactly painful but it's not nice either. The last time I asked a doctor about it he or she (I forget which) told me it wasn't anything that showed up on tests, none of those normal but nasty things like diabetes. Their expert advice was that I put it down to getting older, grin and bear it. Last night on the telly I saw an advert where some people were grimacing as they twiddled their feet or shook their hands. The advert described circulation problems being eased by their medication. It looked like me.

I went to the chemist today and asked for the circulation stuff by name and, whilst I was there, something for the fungus and a box of aspirin. The forty three euros price was a bit of a shock but not exactly a surprise. Prescription drugs are charged at different rates depending on your circumstances. Don't quote me on this but I think that the very rich have to pay 60% of the cost, normal level workers either 40% or 50% and pensioners 10%. Some people are exempt of all charges. The prices for these prescription drugs always seem reasonable to me, I remember some antibiotics were about 3€ so the full price must be around 7.50€. Mind you I don't need stuff every week nor have I ever needed anything exotic. On the other hand over the counter stuff, the throat sweets, the cold remedies, the antiseptic creams and the like are exactly the opposite. "What!?" - "Eleven euros for some crushed paracetomol with a lemon flavour?" That's why the price didn't surprise me.

Like I say I don't go to pharmacies very often. Thankfully I go to the doctor's even less. There is a free health service here just as in the UK, at least it's free for me because I pay my social security and so I'm covered. British pensioners are covered by the health system too through EU legislation. There is a registration process, which I hear is pretty lengthy, but, in the end, it allows the UK to pay the Spanish Government for any treatment given to UK pensioners without the individuals having to pay. Lots and lots of Spaniards believe that older Britons come to Spain specifically to take advantage of the healthcare system and no number of official statistics will ever persuade them otherwise. There are lots of people who aren't entitled to free healthcare and there are lots of contradictory reports about the right to healtcare and to emergency treatment because rules keep changing about either excluding or including non legal residents, about including or excluding the long term unemployed etcetera. Often in these news reports there is no link made between health care rights and payment. I suspect, though I don't know, that although nobody will be left to bleed to death that doesn't mean there won't be a big bill afterwards.

Just to round off, neither everyday dentistry nor eyecare are included in the free system. I'm talking about fillings or a crown and getting yourself some nice new specs, not about cataract operations or jaw rebuilds. Opticians are just as bandit like as in the UK. I was quoted 936€ for a pair of specs and ended up paying about 500€. Dentistry seems pretty inexpensive to me. There is a lot of competition which keeps costs down so that a decent crown costs around 180€ and a filling is in the 30-40€ bracket.

I'm sure that pretty soon, as the months and years roll by, I'll become much more au fait with Spanish healthcare.

Getting off the stool

A warning: This blog will contain lots of rude and crude words. Do not continue if you are easily offended.

I've not been to the doctor very often whilst I've been in Spain. I did have to go though - years ago - because I had a problem with my waterworks, a certain pain when I urinated. As I walked into the doctor's office I apologised for not knowing the doctor words for certain actions and parts. Consider that I were talking to you about my bathroom habits. The verbs would be shit and piss, I'm sorry. They would not be defecate, micturate and urinate; I would not talk of motions, stools, faeces, movements or waterworks and I find the half way words like pee and pooh (does it have an h?) much more embarrassing than the Anglo Saxon words. At the doctor's though it's all bowels and penis.

Maggie has been pruning trees in our garden, she started with the almonds. She learned how to do it from a range of  YouTube videos. She preferred the one where the demonstrator didn't say that you had to get rid of all the shit in the middle of the tree. Gardeners don't have the same reputation as rappers for bad language so I presume it must be an everyday sort of word for at least one gardener.

We saw a Pat Metheny concert in Cartagena a while back. Maggie loves Pat. We were on the front row and Pat dropped a plectrum within arms length - at least my arm was long enough to requisition it for the good of the people. Someone else tried the same thing later, with another plectrum, and was berated by one of the roadies "Would you like it if I came around your house and stole your shit?" The translation would be nothing more than stuff.

Shit is a multi-purpose word. There are lots like it in Spanish, words that are more or less friendly, vulgar or attacking depending on tone of voice and situation. This includes the direct translation of shit. You can be complaining, you can be being rude, you can be describing a process and you can be no different to a Pat roadie.

The Valencian Community seems to be worried about my shit. More accurately they are worried about the health of my bowels. This is good; at least I think it is. They have a campaign for men and women between the ages of 50 and 69 to check whether we may have bowel cancer or not.  First they sent us a letter and when we sent back the "Yes, we'd love to participate" card they sent us a little stick inside a container. You don't need to be able to read Spanish to understand the instructions in the images above. The black thing is a turd. Once the stick was back inside the sealed container it was off to the collection point in the local health centre. Actually Maggie took it whilst I went for breakfast at Eduardo's. I wonder if it will be a person or a machine that has the job of checking the, presumably, thousands of samples? Whilst most of us will get a standardised "no problem" letter some will get the "please pop into the health centre" version.

Back at Eduardo's everyone wanted to know where Maggie was. When I explained one of the Brits retorted with - !Ah, playing Pooh Sticks." I thought it was clever.