One definition of ‘hardship’ is having to use the outdoor community
pool rather than my rather more congenial local swimming centre. I realize that this definition is not one
that will be enthusiastically shared by those, for example in the UK, where the
number of outdoor community pools for private citizens is somewhat
restricted. And even if they were in
greater supply than they are, when would an ‘outdoor’ pool ever be used?
And that brings me to the serial untruthfulness of my friends in
Britain. It is a ‘given’ that any
telephone conversation between Catalonia and the UK will touch on the
weather. Even though we have had an
indifferent early and late spring with weather that all of us grumbled about, I
refuse to believe that the weather in my country of birth is markedly
better. Yet, in every telephone
conversation I have to listen to my British friends say (yet again) that
“Today” (or more tellingly “yesterday”) has/had been glorious!” [I know that the quotation marks in that
sentence are not exactly correct, but merely thinking about them brings back
memories of fiendishly difficult exercises on punctuation in Form 4 or 5 that
took sick minds to devise - and certainly created nausea in the stomachs of
hapless pupils who were called on to ‘solve’ them] At first we took such statements on trust,
but then the suspicious nature of the consistency of response encouraged us to
be a little more circumspect and we started to check up on these statements of
nationalistic climate one-upmanship. And
behold! the facts would invariably cast (at the very least) doubt on the
assertions of flawless skies and tropical temperatures.
It was refreshingly direct, when my cousin Margaret came to
Castelldefels, she sent a selfie by the pool or on the beach to the folk back in
Maesteg and, at the same time she checked the weather. Rain, rain, and more rain. Or, as one of her correspondents put it,
“It’s pissing down here!”
It’s odd, isn’t it - the weather is a topic of national
conversation, whose awfulness is bewailed at every opportunity. We hark back to the ‘Great Summer of 1976’
and somehow seem to ignore the fact that it is a warm experience of over forty
years ago! But let foreign weather
attempt to better our (for want of a better word) climate and suddenly we
become all protective and start rationalizing ‘light rain’ as something that
can be ignored, or ‘a patch of blue’ as a sunny day. Trump’s alternative facts have a lot to
answer for.
I have a simple way of showing the difference between the weather in
Cardiff and Catalonia. Every day I use
my bike (admittedly an electric one, but I still have to pedal) to go on an
epic journey to my local swimming pool.
I do not use my bike if it is raining.
So far this year, I have had to use the car on four occasions. I ask you, members of the jury, how many days
would the bike have been kept at home in Britain?
Of course, you could say that my continuing concern with the weather
is a form of displacement activity to encourage my thinking of something other
than my health.
Six months ago I was diagnosed with thrombosis, embolism and
strained heart. Eight days in hospital;
two weeks total rest; weeks of gradual exercise; hospital appointments; blood
tests; health centre visits, a doctor’s visit to the house (!) {sic.}; twice
daily injections etc etc etc. The six-month
period is a time for more evaluative tests to see exactly how I am doing.
The last visit to the hospital doctor (as opposed to my local
doctor) was generally positive: blood, pee and heart all passed muster. Now on to leg and lungs! And it’s the lungs that are the worry as the
damage that the embolisms did might well be permanent and if that is so, Other
Things Will Need to be Done. What these
things are, I know not of. But they will
be the thorough irritation of my world.
There are Dark Mutterings about some sort of ‘mask’ that might have to
be worn during the nights, but I was told not to worry because the newer ones
are almost silent. If that was meant to
comfort me, it did not. My ever-active
imagination has already sketched out some form of modern/medieval form of
nocturnal torture instrument!
So, while I get browner, as an actual and real sign that our weather
is really quite good, and stride about looking the soul of health, I still have
nagging worries that I will have to take my local doctor’s injunction that I
will have to “remake my world” and live with the consequences of what happened
six months ago.
The visible signs of this remade life are that I now walk with a
stick (when I remember to take it) and I wear a pressure stocking (when I am
shamed into putting it on) and my pathological hatred of the act of walking is
now a sort of medical imperative. I do
not look ill. I do not feel ill. My swimming times are the same or better than
those before January. But it is
difficult to feel totally at ease when you consider that my basic medication is
rat poison. Admittedly it is packaged in
little white tablets that can be easily broken into quarters to match the ever-changing
daily dose, but the fact remains that I am ingesting rat poison. On a daily basis. You might be interested to know that Warfarin
killed the rats by causing internal bleeding, and it is that ability to thin
the blood that is supposed to help those with thrombosis etc. And I hope that it is. This month will demonstrate exactly how
effective the drug has been.
I have also had to change my diet.
I am on a low fat and no salt regime and I haven’t had a drink of
alcohol since January. Admittedly I was
told that I could have an occasional small glass of red wine - but I would
rather do without than be so glaringly abstemious! No salt is just about impossible unless you
cook all your own food and I have less than no intention of doing that, so I
tell the waiters that I need to have a ‘no salt’ dish and believe in their
veracity. Well, don’t knock it, I’m not
dead yet!
It is ironic that in the The Guardian today (the on-line version
that I read) there is a report that suggests that the NHS could save billions
by encouraging doctors not to over prescribe and not to encourage patients to
have series of tests and examinations that may not be strictly necessary. I think that the succession of tests that I
have had in Catalonia and the level of medical care that I have received are in
marked contrast to the service that I would have had if I had still been living
in Cardiff.
As a Baby Boomer (Leading Edge) I am of the generation that is now
entering into the age when the availability of medical services are going to be
called on with greater regularity. On
the 70th Anniversary of the NHS now is the time to start funding the
service as it should be funded and, incidentally, to be taken out of the hands
of a Conservative Party (“lower than vermin”) that did everything in its power
to try and halt its foundation.
You see the way my mind works.
I start talking about the weather and end up with the NHS. But thinking about it, they are both linked,
and the more I think about it, the more one appears to be a metaphor for the
other! But such literary niceties are
for another post!
