One way the Spanish
health service keeps its nurse numbers down is to rely
on the family to sit by the bed, preferably round the clock, to feed and
get drinks for the patients. For those who stay overnight, there's at
least a straight-backed chair or, if you're really lucky, a reclining
chair. The next logical step has been taken by several hospitals in
Cataluña - they'll sell you a card with which you can convert a
chair from a total to a partial nightmare by letting the chair
recline. You can even buy a discount card for 5 nights. People are
complaining, but not about 'privatisation of our health service'.
Talking of satnav
errors . . . Although I know well the route to my daughter's flat in
Madrid, I decided to put mine on just to see what directions I'd get
and, more importantly, what time I'd arrive. So I set it for Calle de
las Palmas and began to follow its instructions - including driving
down a bus tunnel into a terminus. The next 20 minutes was an amusing
(to me) barney between my increasingly agitated friend, Dwight, and the
satnav lady. Dwight knows Madrid intimately and was convinced we were
being taken to the airport. So, I turned off the satnav and followed
Dwight's instructions. In short order we arrived at my daughter's flat
in Calle de la Palma, which - you may have noticed - isn't Calle de
la PalmaS. So, a re-learning of that old IT lesson - Shit in, Shit
out. My fault, not the satnav's. Not that this calmed down Dwight
very much.
There's a
heat wave in southern Spain this week, giving July temperatures in May. So, not
a perfect day for unloading a carload of stuff being shipped from my
house to my daughter's flat. Especially when the lift had ceased
functioning. But that didn't worry me too much, as the donkey work
was being done by Dwight and my daughter, while I concerned myself
with edging in and out of an illegal parking space and scraping the
nearside front of my car on a metal pole in the process. This had had
the top 10cm taken off so that you couldn't see it. How we laughed.
But, anyway, I spent a
wonderful evening with some friends who live in a lovely spot outside
Madrid and who make the best G&T in the world. Which, along with the birdsong, more than
compensated for the tribulations of the afternoon. When I arrived at the community in which they live, no combination of my 3 names coincided with what the security guard had on his roster. And he told me, several times, he'd been told to expect a Sr. Onda. Turned out my friends had given him not just my name but also the make of my car . . .
Finally . . . A joke from Dwight about Franco, possibly invented by one of his
own ministers. So, a minister is talking to Franco, c. 1955:
Generalisimo, you know
that our economy is not doing too well and that the people are very
unhappy. Especially those who are starving.
Yes.
Well, I've been
thinking. Look at how Japan and Germany have bounced back after
defeat by the USA, all on the back of US money.
Yes.
Well, I think it would
be a good idea to declare war on the USA and then we can expect a
huge injection of money into Spain when we lose.
[Pause] And if we
win?
A Happy International Women's Day to all my female readers.
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