Reality will bite!

The twenty-somethingth of this month is going to be significant for me.  On that date I will have to take an examination in Spanish for which I am supremely unprepared.

It was not really my choice to ‘go on’ to the next level in the language at the start of the year, but my (vicious?) teacher encouraged me to progress with comforting words of specious consolation.  I had not, to be fair, ‘nailed’ the last examination – though I got a pass and a certificate that (I think) is the minimum basic level of Spanish competence that will get me nationality – as long as I pass the accompanying examinations on my knowledge of Spanish culture, politics, administration, Real Madrid and the King.

That examination I am not too worried about.  The knowledge needed is factual (though partial) and I know that I can cram for that with no problems.  The problems come with the reality of what Spanish nationality can mean.  As far as I can see, Britain and Spain do not recognize dual nationality.  Indeed, at the moment, what is the point of dual nationality when we are both part of the same EU?  But, thanks to the “lower than vermin” Conservatives and the idiot Brexit voters, that is all about to change.

In a few years time I will be effectively disenfranchised.  After 15 years residence in a foreign country I will no longer be allowed to vote in British elections.  As I am not a Spanish citizen I cannot vote in national elections in this country and, when we leave the EU, I will not be allowed to vote in local elections.  I will then be in the situation where I am taxed in both countries and allowed to exercise my democratic rights in neither.  My freedom of movement will be curtailed and, although it appears that I will have the right to stay on in Spain, I may have to apply for residence and I will certainly lose my present rights to move to and settle in any country in the EU.

After the well documented economic effects of the Brexit self-harm become a reality, it is highly likely that my pension will be further reduced.  The value of the pound has fallen since the announcement of Brexit and I expect it to fall further when Brexit becomes real.  My pension is paid in pounds sterling and is taxed at source and then transferred to my Spanish bank where the total has bought fewer and fewer euros as the disastrous chasm draws nearer.

The present state of my health necessitates regular visits to hospital for check-ups and controls.  I see my doctor regularly and I have a scheduled series of tests stretching into the summer.  I take daily medication for which I pay a token amount.  All of this could change.  At present, although I do not pay it, the real cost of my medical treatment is printed on the information that I am sent.  The treatment of EU national resident in Britain has been scandalously heartless.  The reputation of The Home Office has been comprehensively shredded as more and more examples of callous administrative indifference or active antagonism come to light.  Why shouldn’t EU countries reciprocate? 

Our Prime Minister is the shameless architect of the “hostile environment” and she is presiding over a country where voiced xenophobia is becoming mainstream.  She, and her riven, minority government are disgraceful and in no way reflect my attitudes and ethos, but she and her squabbling rabble are the public faces that the EU sees and I, and people like me, are likely to be the collateral damage from an ideology-driven Brexit that serves (some of) the Conservative Party and ignores those likely to be worst affected by it.

Which brings me back to the solution to my Brexit problems (well, at least some of them) – becoming a Spanish citizen.  As I have no intention of returning to the UK except as a visitor, it makes sense to link myself more closely to my chosen country.  We will leave to one side the question of Catalan independence, and concentrate on what is, at present, on offer.

I have zero intention of giving up my British citizenship.  Though I may be thoroughly depressed at what I observe of the present Daily Mail encouraged right wing exclusivity in the country, I take some comfort from the “This Too Will Pass” school of philosophical tranquillity and fondly believe that sense will eventually prevail and all manner of things will be well.  However, the immediate future demands action and Spanish citizenship seems one realistic way of combating some of the fall-out from the Brexit collapse.

No matter how much rumination I indulge in, there is no alternative but to cough up the readies and buy in some legal advice.  We are now in the tax return season and I do have someone who has done my tax returns and in my next meeting I will start making serious enquiries about the practicalities of citizenship and will-making and all the other little bits and pieces that make for a quiet life in a foreign country!

The necessity for speed has been emphasised by the breathlessness that I experienced on returning from a shopping visit to Aldi to get the necessary stuff for Toni’s birthday meal.  I was glad that I wasn’t alone and that the fetching and carrying was shared, but I still felt exhausted on our return.  This is not good, and such exhaustion concentrates the mind wonderfully. 

Whether that leads to action, well, that’s another question entirely!

Envy

It’s funny how a blast from the past can change electronic delight into ashes!

I cannot now remember the exact date that I was finally beguiled by the seemingly reasonable price of a Polaroid camera into parting with hard earned cash for the dubious delight of producing instant photographs of Things That Didn’t Need to be Remembered in Concrete Form.  It was only after you had bought the machine that you realized just how expensive each of those pictures actually was.  And suddenly no occasion seemed sufficiently worthy of immortalization and the camera became an unwanted reminder of how you had been ripped off by efficient marketing!

But, time has come full circle and the buying of a new camera for a birthday has stimulated desire for something which is obviously backward looking, namely one of the new generation of instant cameras.  The marked difference between the old Polaroids and the new Polaroids and their imitators is in the printing technology.  I do not pretend to understand the technicalities of the process, but it certainly seems to less immediately chemical than the old version.

In Toni’s birthday camera (a neat, fairly slim, white number) the photographs are only 2x3 inches, but they emerge from the camera already partly developed and they do not necessitate the frantic waving around that was an essential part of the older versions of instant cameras.  The detail is impressive and in Toni’s camera he has the ability to save photos to the internal memory and edit them before they need to be printed – a step up from the point and shoot and print version that I remember.

Now, I am not without cameras of mine own.  I have a totally embarrassing number of them, and my new phone, a Huawei P20 Pro, has a camera system which has been developed in association with Leica with three (count them!) rear cameras!  I have already taken what I regard as some astonishing photographs.  Not that I have an instinctive sense of photographic style, but rather that the capture of detail and the depth of field is astonishing for a fairly thin mobile phone.  I look forward to exploring its possibilities and have printed out a manual from the internet to try and tease out the details of their working that too often lies hidden from the ordinary user.

Even this prestigious phone is not enough to protect me entirely from resentment at a new piece of technology being flaunted in my ever-so-gadget-sensitive face!  Now, I am not saying that I want one of these cameras myself, but I don’t like being without one – if you see what I mean!

Today’s weather is sullenly awful and takes its place in a series of sullenly awful days.  We are now into May and according to the contract that I have with Catalonia, we should be getting bright, warm, beautiful days.  And we are not.  While not actually raining, there was certainly rain in the wind and that is not something that I want to experience when cycling back from my Spanish lesson.  I consider that, having made the effort to exhaust my remaining brain cells by the different varieties of the Spanish word ‘porque’ in all its accented and unaccented forms, the very least that the weather could do was shine on me.  Is that really asking too much?

Perhaps my mood will change when we go out to lunch, though I doubt it as we will have to spend some time planning yet another of the Family Celebrations that make May one of the most expensive months in the calendar!

Deprivation?

A “passenger side air-bag replacement recall” for my car has left me bereft for a day – a whole day - without a car.  My car!

Irritatingly, I had to get back from the garage where the faulty car is now with a not-free taxi.  I think, since the fault is nothing to do with me, the firm could have paid for my return to car-less domesticity.  But they didn’t.  And now I have to endure that terrifying sense of isolation and fixity that a confirmed driver feels without his wheels.

I do still have the two wheels of my bike, my electric bike, but even with electrical assistance the range of operation that I am prepared to consider is remarkably restricted. 

As is usual for me, this typing is displacement activity for something else.  Through my interest in history and geography, I seem to have sold my financial soul to the National Geographic Magazine – not their famous monthly publication, but rather a series of their archaeological books which detail various famous sites throughout the world.  I don’t know how many volumes I thought the series comprised, but they seem to be never ending, and there is always something interesting enough to make me feel that the money that I am constantly spending is worth it. 

I particularly like the fact that they show imaginative reconstructions of how the wrecked sites would have looked in their original glory.  So, it was fascinating to see what the site at Petra would have looked like when it was a working trade centre.  I know that a further two volumes in the series are waiting for me in the Post Office in the centre of town, but without the car I am loath to make the journey to get them.  So, I type.

-          Later that day –

I obviously did not type with sufficient brio and conviction as the journey to the PO seemed like a logical and necessary thing.  I now have two more books on Tikal (of which I had never heard) and Saqqara (of which I had).  I have to admit that given the breadth and magnificence of the Mayan ruins of Tikal, I really think that I ought to have had that particular location stored somewhere in my brain.  But it wasn’t.  But now is.  It looks like the sort of place that would pass Dr Johnson’s test and actually be “worth going to see”!

As the accompanying text with the wonderful illustrations is in Spanish, I do tend to spend longer looking at the pictures than trying to work out what I am sure is fascinating information contained in the text.  To prove my point, I just opened the book on Saqqara at random and read a paragraph and, while I would be prepared to give a paraphrase of what it contained, I would not like a fluent Spanish speaker to check my summary.

It is true that I live in my own little “Magic Roundabout” world where I, just like Eric Thompson, use visual images to guide my textual understanding.  He made up stories based on watching the French originals of “The Magic Roundabout” and did not bother with a translation to guide him.  In much the same way I use my recognition of ‘pointers’ in Spanish conversations to guide my responses - however imaginative my use of language has been in deconstructing what I have been told. 

There is not always a perfect match between my inspirational appreciation of a foreign language and the poor natives who have to think about what I might have understood them to have said.  But it does lighten my days, even if it darkens theirs!

A real (and vital) test of my understanding of Spanish comes tomorrow when I go back to the hospital which is monitoring my medication for a ‘Control’.  At present I am administering a combination of injections and pills to keep me on the straight and narrow of health.  The future, I hope, holds a regime of medication that will do without the injections of rat poison because, let’s face it, that is what the ‘blood thinning’ agent that I am being given actually is!  So far, according to my rough calculations I have given myself over 200 injections in the war zone that used to be my tummy!  Enough, as they say, is enough and I would dearly love to take back the sharps box that I have borrowed from my medical centre complete with the empties!  But the reality is that I will probably need a few more ‘controls’ to get the medication right and that means that I will have to continue to administer the injections.

Because of my selective understanding I take most of my treatment on trust.  I have seen a few doctors and they have taken time and trouble to explain what is going on with the blood clots, embolisms and thrombosis, but the detail of my treatment is part of an ongoing routine that I do not really follow.  At present, for example, I do not get to see a doctor when I have my controls.  The blood drop test is administered by a nurse who passes on the information to a doctor who then decides what combination of medication I need to take until the next control.  The information comes in the form of a sheet with printed information about the amounts I need to take leading up to the next control.  Given the variety of combinations that I have already been through I do not think that we are getting any nearer to a finalized and regular dosage.  But I live in hope.  I have seen fellow patients with sheets that are obviously for whole months rather than the week that I have, so, probably, even at best, I will have a monthly visit instead of a weekly one.  But I will settle for that rather than the fatal alternative!

I continue to be surprised at the difference between my swimming and walking abilities.  As far as swimming is concerned I am now back to normal, indeed a recent swim was completed in a time that matched and bettered my pre-January times.  My walking is a different matter.

I find that walking more than a couple of hundred yards is a real physical effort and I am more than grateful that I purchased a collapsible shooting stick that is an efficient walking stick as well.  I was talk that the damage to my lungs might well be permanent and so I will have to make do with what is left.  I have also been told that there is no point in my exercising to the point of breathlessness as that could be dangerous and so everything has to be done in moderation – not my natural state!

Back in January my doctor told me that I would have to “find a new life” and I suppose that discovering how much I can do and how to cope with the difference that it makes is part of that discovery.

Rethinking a life style is not made any easier by the fact that, sitting here typing, I do not feel any different from what I felt before the pulmonary embolism was discovered, and if you watched me around the house you would see no difference: I walk around unaided and go up and down stairs without any noticeable ill effects; I use my bike to go to and fro and I am even marginally thinner!  But I am daunted by a walk through town, something that I would have not thought about for a moment before the illness.

We have a trip to Edinburgh planned for late July and that is going to have to be a very different experience from the other city breaks that we have had in the past.  Gone are the days when I used to enjoy getting lost in a city maze and walking my way back to something recognizable.  Things will have to be planned with busses, trains, taxis and resting stops.  I have even found that walking around a gallery is now something that needs to be thought about, and something that needs my shooting stick!

I do realize just how lucky I am that the embolism was discovered in time and that exhaustive and exhausting efforts are being made to treat me.  But it does not stop me feeling all the frustration that limitations on previous freedom impose.  Just like my car deprivation, so my personal movement deprivation prompts me to explore an area of essential self-reflection for survival.

-          Later that week –

Such is my indolence that weeks go by without my adding to my blog.  But today, today is going to be different.  Although this is being typed on my new computer and there is always a glitch or two before I understand what minor modifications are necessary for a new machine to fit into the old order!  Still, I am determined that this will be on the site today.  And I am further determined that I will get back into the routine of producing a daily blog.

What, you might well ask, am I doing rather than typing?  Well, the gruesome answer is that I am reading The Guardian.  The adjective is appropriate because I am becoming ever more depressed to find that my wishy-washy liberal (with a small ‘l’) pseudo socialist ideals are more and more distanced with what I can se going on in my immediate neighbourhood and indeed in the wider world.

Spanish politics are depressing in the extreme. The so-called Spanish government is characterized by rampant corruption, ineptitude and arrogance in roughly equal measures.  Wait, no, that’s not right: first and foremost, our government is systemically corrupt and corrupting.  If you wish to join me in my depression just Google “Spanish Corruption” and see the wealth of gob-stoppingly astonishing information of what PP and its minority government get away with!

Turning to Britain is hardly a relief.  The full horror of Brexit is getting clearer by the day as the poleaxed government, sorry “minority government” of the “hostile environment” May prevaricates its way towards disaster.  The “Windrush” Scandal has left me with a deep sense of shame and the continuing revelations about the Home Office demean one of the great offices of state.  I have no wish to be associated with such small-minded viciousness or the callous practioners who have engineered it.  And, yes May, I am referring to you and your disgraceful tenure at the Home Office / to say nothing of your awful premiership!

And then I turn to the United States of America - and I instantly look towards the Middle East for a more rational approach to political life!

Wherever I read in my Guardian, it merely fuels my frustration of a right thinking (in a left-wing sort of way) decent person whose reasonable view of the world seems to be at variance with the voting majority.  

 I know it is easy to turn to the plays of Ibsen and take Dr Stockman’s cry in “Enemy of the People” of “The majority is always wrong!” and feel justified in loneliness, but that is not enough.  Everywhere I look people seem to be willingly joining in a global danse macabre towards oblivion in which the dance steps seem to be way outside the normal rules of rhythmic movement!   

Facts now are more than elastic, and prejudice has become the new reality – or perhaps it always was the generally accepted reality, it is only now that supposedly intelligent organs of the establishment rise above factual refutation and demand that their prejudiced views become the accepted norm.  And yes, Donald Trump, I am referring to you.

Perhaps some of my misery is parasitic on the fact that my next ‘control’ is in five days’ time, with the same combination of injections and pills leading up to it.  It seems to me that my medics are no nearer to finding a workable system of user-friendly medication than they were months ago.  However, I live in hope that one day I will be presented with a sheet which covers a whole month of settled medication, rather than the few days at present!

The next control clashes with my Spanish lesson, and I have missed too many classes already to be jocose with missing more.

On the positive side: typing with my new laptop is a delight, and it makes me happy.  And that is a good thing.  And I have bought a new case for it.  And that makes me happy too.  Who truly worries about world destruction and the decimation of my pension through the devaluation of the pound when gadgets and their care can deflect a susceptible mind!