Stand your ground

I once shook Desmond Tutu's hand. He didn't really shake mine back -  he was looking the other way and talking to someone over his shoulder but he was also shaking any hand that was thrust towards him, and mine was one of those. Our palms touched so I've always claimed it as a handshake. The truth is, but for that handshake I remember nothing else about that day. I presume Nelson was still locked up, I suppose Queen, and many others, were still playing Sun City. No matter - both Dessie and I thought we should be there that day and we were. Google tells me it was probably 1988.

That may be the last time I was on a big demonstration—the ones where I joined one of the coaches to take protestors to London. I'm sure I did some picket line duty into the 1990s, and I've been a half participant in a couple of things here about worker's and women's rights but my real demonstration days were Cruise Missiles at Molesworth, the Miners' Strike, Ban the Bomb, and the Anti-Apartheid protests of the Eighties rather than the Anti-Capitalist or Environmental themes of more recent times. Daniel Ortega apart, I have no regrets about the placards I waved and slogans I shouted back then.

The other week, I went on a demonstration for the first time in decades. This time it was in Elda/Petrer and it wasn't quite on the same scale as most of the protests I got involved in when my bones still didn't ache. I don't think there were many of us, in Elda, but with one of those wildly unsubstantiated guesses that we all make about numbers, I said to someone who asked on the day that I reckoned there were about a thousand people there. When I checked just now the local paper's estimates were about the same.

We were there to shout for better funding for the state health service, to shout to stop the drift of money from the public sector towards private health care and to shout against the scramble within Europe to spend more money on submarines, tanks, and all the other paraphernalia of war - because a deranged politician tells our governments they should - at the expense of basic services. Odd actually because that's another conversation I had recently, with the Spanish language AI application; all about the cost of tanks and submarines and destroyers and suchlike when cheap and cheerful one-way attack drones and torpedoes can do to them what inexpensive shoulder-launched SAM missiles did to high-tech Soviet Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters in Afghanistan. But I digress. 

I was there, in Elda, because I felt guilty when a woman I know, through the book club, was talking about how a coach, that the pensioner's club had arranged to go to an earlier pro health service march, had to be cancelled for lack of interest. She'd been disgusted at the terrible turnout. As she upbraided the population of Pinoso, I felt individually guilty because I'd meant to go that last time but chose a cup of coffee with friends instead. This time I didn't, I went to shout and march. I joined in with the chanting - it was a sort of call and answer system with the loudspeaker equipped car at the front setting go little couplets - Sanidad no se vende and we'd reply with Sanidad, se defiende - Healthcare's not for selling, Healthcare's for defending or Recursos a la pública - No a la privada - Resources to the public system - not to the private.

Spain has a free-to-users health service. Of course, that's not strictly true because the money comes from taxpayers, but it's what we all understand as a free health service. When someone gets ill there's a system to try and fix them up without profit being the driving motive. It's available to anyone within the Social Security system. Just like in the UK, there have been cuts to the service; there are shortages of trained staff; working conditions for the current workforce are criticised; and there is insidious but constant pressure from right-of-centre administrations to send people to private hospitals and clinics for routine tests and procedures rather than investing in the system of public care. It's strange—writing this piece reminded me that when I was teaching English, I had lots of conversations with Spaniards, unaware of the free health care system in the UK, who were quite sure that Britons came to Spain as health tourists to take unfair advantage.

I don't suppose a few hundred people walking down the road from Petrer to Elda in the rain is going to make Carlos Mazón (President of Valencia) suddenly change his mind and dig deep to fund local services but at least this time I didn't go for coffee. And, as I remember it, there are no cruise missiles at Molesworth and Nelson Mandela died a free man.

-----------------------

The title I remember from a march in favour of the miners during the Miner's Strike. It started from a park in Leeds. The march was led by a brass band. A portly man wrapped in a tuba asked the bandleader - in a broad Yorksher accent. "And Brian, if the' start feetin' - what shud we do?" Brian's answer: "Stand thi ground lad, stand thi ground!"

On the power of explanation

It’s the same with almost anything. The first time it’s all a bit hit and miss; the next time it’s usually better. I’ve just realised what you’re thinking about. That’s probably true too, but that wasn’t where I was going. I was thinking more about the tram in Alicante as an example. I’ve ridden on the tram a few times, but it’s nearly always several months, or even years, between the rides. I knew there was a button to buy a ticket for the central zone, but I couldn’t find the damned thing amidst all the text on the machine. It turns out that it’s TAM, Tarifas Zona A Metropolitana. I'd only just worked out the system as we pulled into our destination station. I even wondered about not paying.

Years ago, I had a "neurological incident," and after a few days in hospital, I ended up going to the neurology outpatients department at Elda Hospital. The first time I turned up in the outpatients area, where they have lots of the specialist services, I thought I’d descended into the seventh circle of Hell. There were people everywhere. After a while, though, I worked out the system and, despite the hustle and bustle, I realised that it all made perfect sense.

I had to go to the ear, nose and throat (ENT) department recently. They’re in the same part of the hospital as neurology, and I’d remembered enough of the drill to be completely unfazed by the experience. I just sat down, near the appropriate door, read my book, and waited to be called, quite sure that would be the system.

Obviously, some situations are more important than others. The ticketing system for the queue at the Foreigner's Office isn't that different from the ticketing system for the delicatessen counter in the local supermarket. One, though, is essential if you wish to stay in the country legally, and the other makes for a tasty snack. It obviously helps if, like Lizarran or Wetherspoons, the organisers put up big notices to explain the system.

After my visit to the ENT people, the unpronounceable otorrinolaringología department (easier to say otorrino), I needed more tests. They said they would phone me. Nowadays, I know that great big long phone numbers aren’t some prince from Equatorial Guinea trying to steal my money, but a call from either Corte Inglés or the Health Service. I presume it's a number based on a central "switchboard" and various extensions. As I have no current dealings with the department store, the choice was easy. I used to get flustered by these calls; nowadays, I’m much better at keeping it slow and steady. I was, of course, driving when they rang, but I remained cucumber like - I asked questions: Is that 8 in the morning or the evening? When I went through a sort of confirmatory checklist with time, place, department, etc., it was the person ringing me who wasn't quite sure. "I'll ring you back with the department," she said. And she did.

So I’m there, in the specialist outpatients clinic before the cock has crowed. The gatekeeper is quite a strangely shaped woman who speaks a language that escapes me. Pointing and the odd word of comprehensible Castellano makes me plump for an information window. I wait there, I show my health card, and I’m given some bits of paper. Most of the other people have similar bits of paper. Being among a group of people all going through the same process makes it easier. I can see that the first port of call is for a blood test. As I wait, someone wearing white scrubs, leaning out of a door further down the corridor, shouts, “Anyone for cardio? You can do it in any order.” I look at my bits of paper; one has “cardiogram” written on it. The penny drops: three bits of paper, three tests.

I do my cardio, the ECG, but the conversation between the two women, as they push my results into an envelope, “We’ll let them sort that out,” isn’t that reassuring.

I go back to blood tests. I always confound blood nurses; I appear to have no veins. I can only presume that ancient ancestors lived in Transylvania and developed the feature as an anti-vampire measure. At one point, I have three medical people giving me different instructions: “Make a fist, raise your arm, tense your arm, relax.” I make the vampire joke; they grimace, but the blood eventually flows. More than once in the past, blood has been taken from the veins on my hand or between my fingers.

Last one: X-ray. I’m waiting, I'm reading. Another person in coloured scrubs asks me what my name is. Ten minutes later, she asks me if I’m waiting for an X-ray. I say yes. She asks me why I didn’t hand in my piece of paper. I could say because nobody asked me, or because that isn't the same process I've just followed in two other departments within five metres of where I am now sitting. But I don’t, and I get my X-rays easily enough.

Only once, in a medical situation, have I ever got snotty about this. In Huntingdon, in an NHS hospital at 9 p.m., I told some doctor-type, who was only speaking to me in single words, that “right” and “trousers” did not amount to instructions, and that while he may go through the same routine thirty times a day, I didn't, and he should show more respect to his patients. He needed to be a bit more Wetherspoons, a bit more Lizarran, and a lot less Alicante tram.

P.S.: I asked Microsoft Copilot to draw the picture. AI obviously has trouble with the spelling of anestesiología.