Rain means write

True to my word: the heavens have opened (momentarily) and I have taken to the keyboard, making electronically concrete my pledge to write more when the weather broke. It is still hot, but there is a fresher feeling to the heat than there was yesterday.

This will be another opportunity for this country to display its usual ability to vouchsafe a little sunshine even in the most unpromising of days. The weather in Catalonia lacks the spitefulness of the customary British weather where the sun can disappear for days on end. Here, it is rare indeed for a single day to pass without at least a moment’s sunshine. The clock is set and I am waiting!

Yesterday was a day of waiting. Well, at least part of it. I was scheduled for a hospital appointment at the unnatural hour of 1.40 pm to get the results of my “sleep-over” in hospital to check on my level of sleep apnoea. The threat was that I would be forced to wear some sort of mask during the hours of darkness to encourage me to have a more sleepfully sleepy sleep. From experience derived from my stay in hospital in January I knew that, as far as I am concerned, a mask (however slight) would result in steely wakefulness.

My appointed time came and went and, disturbingly, not a single person came out or went in to Room 12 where my meeting was to take place.

In Catalan hospitals there is a card reader for patients. You take your medical card and let the machine read it, and a few seconds later it recognizes your existence and shows you your name, appointment time and room location. So, as soon as you use the machine, the doctor knows that you are in the hospital and waiting.

And wait I did. Thanks to my mobile phone I was able to while away the time by a combination of intelligent reading and mindless (almost!) game playing so that I never reached that fingernail-down-the-blackboard furious irritation that comes with endless inaction. However, even electronically fuelled activity cannot keep patience even and I flounced off to an “information” section of the hospital to find out what was going on.

And they didn’t seem to know either. Unanswered phone calls and a group discussion produced nothing, but I was told to go back to where I had come from and something would happen.

I returned to the waiting room and nothing happened.

For a while.

And then, through an unnoticed staff door, the person to whom I had been speaking suddenly appeared, motioned me to change my seat and then disappeared.

And nothing happened.

And then it did. Hearing some mangled combination of my names I leapt to my feet and was eventually seen. You have to understand that, in Catalonia, they assume that my middle name (unused expect as an initial in Britain) is my family name and that my last name (my family name in Britain) is my mother’s surname (as in Catalonia). How my dad would have coped in this country, not having a middle name is something to think about.

Anyway I was seen by two tired medicos who were obviously reading my notes for the first time as I sat across from them.

I had all my notes. In Catalonia you can register with your medical centre and download all the notes that your doctor has. I am now building up an impressive book called, “Stephen’s Health” that contains everything about my condition that I have ever been given or I have been able to download. The results from my hospital sleep over had been missing, but they have now found their electronic way into my records and have consequently been transferred to hard copy and extra pages in the book.

The unfortunate thing is that they are largely meaningless to me as they are couched in medical terminology that is beyond me. This is where the website on which my records live shows its versatility as there is also an opportunity to contact your doctor via email to ask for clarification. And that I have done.

We have just had another sharp shower that means that I will continue to type as the lack of sun means that the lure of the sunbed has no present power.

Showers also limit my bike riding. Although I have a cycling rain jacket, a flimsy thing with slashes whose function seems to let the rain in, I distain to use the bike when the weather is inclement. To be fair I can only think of a few occasions in the past six months or so when I have had to use the car rather than the bike, so I cannot complain – and I might add that I have yet to use the rain jacket as I have not been caught in a storm.

But the non-use of the bike at the moment is because of a flat tyre. I have zero intention of either repairing the thing or changing it, so I am looking for a cycle shop to do the dirty work. But, it is August. And no one wants to be in their shops during this traditional shut down time, so I will have to hunt around for some character who is prepared to work during the non-working time of the year. And that is going to be something of a problem.

Although Castelldefels is a seaside town where you would think that everything would be open to take full advantage of holidaymakers, you would be wrong. There are restaurants here that are now closed for the holiday season! 

We have long ago given up about trying to understand just how the commercial mind of this place works, we simply have to go with the illogical flow!