Life in Culebrón

I went to get a flu jab today. Not the trickiest of procedures. The first time I did it here I was in a hospital for something else and there was a bloke giving away free vaccine in the hospital entrance so I stopped and got one. Last year, in the dark days of one of the several waves of Covid, the health centre was in silence and I was severely disinfected and made to follow arrows on the floor which pointed to the young woman with the sharp needle. I've got the jab another couple of times as well and the process has been swift and painless (in both senses). I'd booked up my jab using the health service's mobile phone app. Ten past ten. I rolled up at nine minutes past and asked someone on reception where to go. She waved to the seats where lots of people were waiting. I waited and I waited. I had a bit of a chat with Enrique and a much longer one with Dorothy. It began to get stupid. I went over and collared someone wearing white pyjamas. "No idea," she said, ...

Not that I expected a marching band or anything but I did expect a bit more of an event. A queue of people waiting for the vaccination would have made it more memorable, serried ranks of desks each one attended by a little group of medical personnel all in purple gloves would have been good. But none of it. Yesterday I got a phone call on the landline. It was the local health centre and they gave me a time for an appointment today. I left home fifteen minutes before the set time. "I'm here for the jab," I said and I think the person on the door already knew my name rather than reading my name from the health card she asked to see. No temperature check or anything. I was taken to a chair in the corridor, where people normally wait to see the doctors, and told to wait. I was given a couple of stapled bits of the sort of photocopy where the second copy was made from a copy and the third copy from the second copy and so on for forty generations. Stencil quality. The first she...

I went to see the doctor this morning. Like all the doctors I've ever encountered, doctors in Spain make you wait. This is obviously because a doctor's time is much more valuable than mine or, indeed, yours. In truth, nowadays, nearly everyone's time is more valuable than mine in a financial sense but, as usual, I seem to be straying up a branch line. I've been to the doctor a few times over the years in Pinoso but not to the point that it's second nature to me. I was quite decided to be decisive today. The last time I was there there was a little printed list stuck up with sellotape outside the doctors door. The appointments were arranged in 15 minute blocks. Inside the fifteen minute block there would be three names; three people had the same appointment time. I couldn't remember whether the system was first come first served or whether the list order gave the order. My decisiveness amounted to no more than asking rather than muddling through. I was stym...

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 ...