Skip to main content

Featured

All done

That's it. My teaching is over until September - provided some of my "clients" want me back. The phone and ADSL connection here are cancelled and could go off at any minute, the flat is basically clean but for one last hoover around and a quick mop and my landlady has given me an extension till half past one tomorrow when she will come for the keys. So Life in La Unión is now, almost officially, dead. I won't be back here next academic term so there will be no more entries. Just Life in Culebrón alive then. La Unión has not been my favourite home but the flat has served its purpose and I will miss the nearby bars when I'm back in Culebrón for the summer. In fact I think I might just pop out for one last chilli burger and a couple of beers now before settling down to watch tonight's episode of El chiringuito de Pepe. I may as well make the most of not working this evening and having the bars at hand. Thanks for reading. Hasta pronto.

Spain is different

The External Health building in Cartagena looks disused. I first went there a couple of weeks ago. I pressed the bell but I was so sure that the building was abandoned that I had started to walk away before someone answered the door. They took details and made me an appointment for today.

Today in the same building a toothless chap wearing jeans and a faded polo shirt asked me what I wanted. He didn't look like medical staff - no white coat, the unmistakable badge of anyone doing any job in the health service. He must have been the caretaker because he knew what I had to do. First the registration on a lob sided, thousand time copied form and then a short wait for the doctor.

Usual advice - avoid the water, drink whisky without ice, don't eat veg. Big change to my lifestyle there then. Covering myself in DEET and taking anti typhoid and malaria tabs will be novel though. To get the tablets I need to go to another doctor for a scrip. Usual Spanish system. Why do things there and then when you can send someone to a second queue, why use one doctor when two will do?

"Oh, by the way," she said, "You probably won't be able to find the anti typhoid drug I've suggested  - they're in short supply. Try a lot of pharmacies and then," pointing to a piece of paper,  "buy this alternative non prescription drug." I laughed.

"Yes, Spain is different," she sniggered, echoing the old Francoist advertising slogan.

Comments

Popular Posts