One
of the pluses of being slightly middle-aged and clearly not Spanish
is that, at revels such as those of Friday evening in Ortigueira,
merry Spanish youths will come up to me and, instead of threatening
to maim me, will start to chat and then beam with pleasure when I
respond in Spanish. Similarly, this group of youngish folk hailed me
for a chat early on Saturday morning.
And, while the young lady was
off checking the text of the plaque for the Lady with a Duck on
her Head, the chap with the hat warned me off Galician women, using one
or two adjectives I didn't recognise, and one or two I did. He was
delighted to hear I'd formed VOGA - The Victims of Gallegas
Association - but disappointed when I told him it was only open to
foreigners.
Walking
across the Ortigueira alameda
early yesterday morning, I was musing on the conundrum that the
Spanish can be exceptionally civil while, at the same time, indulge in behaviour which would be almost unthinkable in other countries.
Just a few minutes later, as I was taking a coffee and croissant, a
woman came into the place, having left her dog outside. For the next
25 minutes, the dog yapped non-stop. And I mean non-stop. As the
large window was wide open, the noise was inescapable and I had to
resort to i-Tunes and my earphones. The funny thing was, I seemed to
be the only person in the place to notice the noise, never mind be
annoyed by it. Pathetically, the woman occasionally moved to the
window and flapped a hand at the dog as if to reassure it. It had nil
effect. After she'd finished her coffee and a chat with some guy she
knew, she left and untied the dog. Whereupon the little rat ran into
the café and tried to ingratiate itself with the customers.
Including me. Even more pathetically, the woman made strenuous
attempts to catch it, at which she finally succeeded. She tried to
give me a semi-apologetic glance or two - or she may have been trying
to elicit sympathy. Either way, I icily ignored her.
Spain: Expect
the unexpected: I went to 4 pharmacies before I could get some
pills I needed. Ignoring the 18th century one in Ortigueira, this is
how the other 3 conversations went:-
Pharmacy
1:
We don't have the
branded product. We do have the generic product but because the
doctor prescribed the branded product, we can't give you the generic
.
Pharmacy 2:
We don't have the
branded product but we have the generic product. I'll have to check
something though. . . . Sorry, the generic product is a few centimos
more expensive than the branded product [sic] so we're not allowed to
give it you.
Pharmacy 3: We
have both the branded product and the generic. Which would you like?
Would anyone like
to guess from this what the prescribing rules are?
I have the details of at least thirty 42" TVs, from which I'm trying to pick a Best Buy. Sorting them today, it struck me it would have been a good idea to note which shops they were available in.
Well,
with one thing and another (especially property frauds), it had to
happen - Spain has fallen down the list of attractive retirement
options for the Brits. And Germany is said to represent an excellent
alternative for those looking for stability. Details here.
Finally . . . I
need to correct my slander on the second bed in Dixie's mobile home;
he told me midday yesterday he'd not known how the ladder worked and,
when shoving the bed back up into the roof, had found two relevant
slots for it at the end of the bed. I chose to believe him.
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