Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, April 26, 2012


Two or three weeks ago, I remonstrated with those - primarily lazy overseas Anglo-Saxon article writers - for habitually claiming it's always raining in Galicia. Well, after the last 12 days, I'm compelled to offer a suspension of their sentence. For it's rained every single bloody day. And sometimes through the night. Not before time, the sun is forecast to return in the next few days. Actually, it's just deliberately come now, mocking my concerns.

Still on the weather . . . As usual, April in the UK has been the something or other in X years. Driest, wettest, warmest, longest, whatever. Well, the official prediction is that May'll be the coldest in 300 years, to be followed by a 'sizzling' summer. Given that the old joke is that summer in Britain is one sunny day and a thunderstorm, I guess we can assume there'll be two, or even three, days of sun this year. 'Sizzling' in Britain, by the way, is anything above 15 (60) degrees. My own prediction is that the forecast will only be half right. The half about May being brass monkeys weather.

The first reprise of the day . . . MoviStar: Chapter 2

Proving that I am more efficient than this phone company - but what were the chances I wasn't? - I dug out the original contract and found that the number used was none of the three discussed yesterday but my passport number. So . . .
Is Ana there, please.
No. she's left.
Well, can you give her the message that the relevant number for MoviStar is my passport number, xxxxxxxx.
OK. But why?
So she can give it to MoviStar and get them to deliver me the router I've been waiting a week for. And please remind her it has to arrive before the weekend as I'm about to leave the country.
Oh, OK.

Vamos a ver.

Walking through town yesterday, I suddenly realised I was doing what the locals do - walking in front of people as if they weren't there. The very opposite of what I instinctively do in the UK. So this is multiculturalism, I said to myself. With a smile.

Wouldn't you know it, the day I write of my own psychiatric struggles, Dr Theodore Dalrymple brightens our lives by talking of Shakespeare's amazing diagnostic skills.

Which is a nice segue into the day's second reprise . . . .

A little more on my depression. "What", some may ask, "caused the (huge) black dog to visit you and to stay so long. And then to go away and come back again?" I have no idea. All the members of my family have their pet (canine!) theories but there's only one I give any credence to. And then not a lot.

Just before Christmas 2010 I was overwhelmed one morning by an anxiety that came out of nowhere. I visited a psychiatrist that night - I have often wondered since why he was the only one in town with an empty appointments diary - and told him I feared it was a prelude to depression. He gave me an anti-anxiety drug and told me not to worry. I was back the next day, in the throes of depression. He started me on an antidepressant, stressed it'd take at least two weeks to kick in and said that within three months I'd be as right as rain and looking back and laughing at my experience. I'm paraphrasing but I still wouldn't trust his judgement on a horse race. Or much else.

As for the possible cause - For the last 10 years I've been aware that all the females in my family - my mother, my aunt, my two sisters and my two daughters - have an under-active thyroid born of Hashimoto's disease. But not me, I was sure, since it really only hit females. But last year my elder daughter insisted I have the antibody tests, as depression is one of the myriad possible consequences of a malfunctioning thyroid. Eventually I did and, guess what, there were the bloody antibodies. And a recent thyroid panel test showed up low T4, indicating hypothyroidism. So . . . like all my female relations, I'm now taking daily thyroxin. My hope is it'll keep the black dog away from my door. As, frankly, his bark is just as bad as his bite and, in truth, I've really had quite enough of him.

But if my posts don't appear for more than, say, a week, it'll be because the bastard is back. Or I'm dead.

Khoda na Khod.

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