Life in Culebrón

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 ...

I t turned out to be a bit of a porky. They told me I'd be in hospital for about 24 hours to fit a peg  - a stomach feeding tube. It's nothing more than a plastic tube that leads directly into my stomach. It will be needed when my throat has closed up so much with the radiotherapy that I can no longer eat through my mouth. In fact I'm here till Monday. I thought this was the last of the pre-treatment things to be done before the real fun starts. I've been running around the province getting bloods done here, a talk to a dietician there and CAT scan at another place. The talk with the radiotherapy hospital in Alicante actually turned into quite a session. Information given, they made a sort of death mask (and I'm not being maudling, it's just what it reminded me of) by shaping a heated plastic mesh around the contours of my face. The idea is that I will be held in place by the mask as they blast me with rays and the grid, just like in a game of battleships, will ...

Chinese buffets are an example. The first time you go to one it's all a bit confusing. The second time, less so, and by the third time you actually get what you want and in the order you want it. I've heard that crows learn quickly but I think we humans are faster. I've been helping a friend in his meetings with the medical staff at the hospital. If you've read this blog before you will know that I mumble and groan about my Spanish speaking ability all the time. I do speak Spanish though. I gurgle and trip over words, my Yorkshire accent becomes more pronounced and I abandon any clever constructions I may think I know, especially during the first few words, but I usually muddle through. Hospitals are much less easy to understand than Chinese buffets but, crow like, I suspect we'll soon pick it up. Spanish hospitals speak Spanish which adds a layer of difficulty for non Spanish speakers. Not only do you not know which door to wait outside or knock on but it...

I think it would be true to say that the majority of Britons who settle in Spain intend to learn Spanish. The general view seems to be that, after a year or so, we should be getting by followed by a general and constant improvement until we are fluent after maybe four or five years. A longish term project but with immediate gains. That's a vast generalisation. Some people never have any intention of learning Spanish. Others, particularly those who maintain regular and constant relationships with Spaniards through living, working or studying together, may expect to, and actually do, learn the language much faster. There are as many opinions on learning Spanish amongst Britons living here as there are Britons. I often think that a chap who runs a famous English language learning organisation here in Spain has it right. He was talking about English but the idea holds good for Spanish. He maintains that most people learning English get to whatever level they want or need and then f...

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 age...

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 ques...

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 tha...

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...

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...

There have been quite a lot news items recently about a shortage of blood donors in Spain. I heard one such item on a programme I often listen to as I drive to work and so I wrote a comment on their Facebook page. This is what it said:  Oí algo sobre los problemas de donación de sangre en vuestro programa y recientemente hay muchas noticias sobre la falta de sangre en España. La mayoría de los británicos que viven aquí, muchos con una historia de donación en el Reino Unido, no pueden donar por un decreto que tiene algo que ver con las "vacas locas" de los años 90 y la posibilidad de contraer la enfermedad de Creutzfeldt-Jakob - algo que no pasa. Un sencillo cambio de ley y, de repente, tendríamos más donantes. Espero que entiendas mi versión de español Or more or less as a translation;  I've heard something about the problems of blood donation on your programme and recently there have been a lot of news items about the lack of blood in Spain. The majori...

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 demons...

People tell me I complain. I usually think I am commenting or, more often, guffawing, at the preposterousness of whatever it may be. For instance in Of no fixed address Anyway, as usual, I was wrong. Just ask Maggie. Always wrong. My address wasn't the real problem. True I had to go to Elda about 25 kilometres away where I was sent from one office to a second but once I was in the right place it took only a few seconds to change my address with the Social Security, with the Health people. Back at the computer I applied for my European Health Card only to have the application turned down again. So I rang the helpline. I enjoyed the music and the mix of information and encouragement to not go away as the minutes ticked away. The woman told me that I'm not employed, I'm not a pensioner and I'm not unemployed so I can't have a card. I explained that I have a job. She couldn't find me on the system and it took a while before she did. Ah, your contract ended a...

Spain has a proud record on organ donations. Although donations fell a little in 2010 (1502 donors and 3,770 transplants) from the all time record of 1605 donors in 2009 Spain still tops the Worldwide list of donors and donations. Based on the donations per million inhabitants it's Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, The United States, France, Austria and Italy. Their main methodology here seems to be to talk to families after someone has died rather than to rely on donor registers. Nonetheless, there is a donor register and I signed up for it on the Internet last week. That's why I'm telling you this as my donor card arrived today. The card has no legal validity, it just indicates to my family that if there is any part of my poor and degraded body that may be useful to someone else I'd like them to have it. Just one thing: please get someone to check that I'm dead first! So now you know