Connery is leaning on the wall of the brick outhouse, fiddling in his pocket for a large bunch of keys, and as we approach I suddenly become aware of a loud rushing noise. A watery rushing noise, emanating from the ……. surely not? A rickety old structure, three yards wide, corrugated roof…. is this what we have come to see?. Our decrepit film-star holds up a hand. ‘Please, we have to visit one at a time, as there is not much space inside. So, who is first?’
Suddenly I am shoved rudely aside, as my wife forces her way to the head of the queue. ‘Bugger off!’ she giggles. ‘Come back in about an hour!’ Her whiskery hero unlocks the door, and the pair of them disappear inside.
It appears as if Pete has decided to follow us, after all. ‘You want to watch him in there with your woman!’ he cries, ‘bastardos, those Aqualia hombres!’ He gestures at the still reclining figure at the bottom of the slope, who is having her stockings sponged off by Monarch. ‘I see the Elephante and the Rinoceronte didn’t make it! Ridiculoso! Waste of time them coming!’
Before I can frame a suitable reply, the door to the outhouse reopens, and my red-faced, breathless wife emerges, grinning widely, fanning her face with her hand. ‘Incredible! she pants. ‘What a force of nature! I thought my head would explode! And the water was quite good, too! Your turn.’
‘Told you, didn’t I?’ shouts our annoying neighbour. ‘Look at her face. Bastardos, those Aqualia hombres!’
Not sure I’m all that keen, now, I have to tell you, but in for a penny and all that. Be a shame to come all this way… I open the door and am almost deafened by a rushing torrent, a cascade of water, in a cleft in the rock, a chasm, almost twenty feet below. A natural spring, clearly, but such a huge shock to the system as I always imagined a dribble, a trickle of water, not a violent deluge like this, which would surely mean certain death to anyone falling in? A set of stone steps leads down to a concrete viewing platform, and Connery is holding out his arm for me to take, which I am extremely reluctant to do as, unlike my wife, holding hands with other men in underground chambers not one of my biggest ambitions, I can tell you. Same as those pleasure-boat rides, on holiday, isn’t it, where there is usually some beefy great sailor waiting to take hold of my hand as I step aboard? No thank you. I can manage. On this occasion however, gazing into the roaring turbulence of what could easily be a watery grave, especially if I have traces of goat shit on the soles of my espadrilles, I decide that having James Bond on hand, albeit an extremely elderly one, might be a good thing, after all, just in case, and you know what they say, discretion, valor and all that, so I take his arm, firmly, in a don’t I have a firm grip, hell of a game, hell of a game, Bears got a good team this year deep-voiced kind of way, and allow him to lead me down the steps.
Conversation is impossible, such is the force of the water, but he points out a huge iron pipe, maybe a foot in diameter, with a wheel controlling what I assume is a valve to regulate the flow, leading off to one side of the gorge, in the direction of town. Otherwise, apart from a rusty strip-light flickering away on the ceiling above, everything is refreshingly old-school. No dials, gauges, men in white coats and hard hats, just a crack in the rock which has probably been there about a million years. Welcome to Santa Marta water-works.
Smiling my appreciation and shaking him warmly by the hand, he follows me up the steps, which is good to know, something to cushion my fall, should I lose my footing, and out into the blinding sunshine. Chrissie is sprawled on the grass, so checking for unwanted dung, I join her while we wait for the others to complete their tours, which doesn’t take long as Hyacinth and Monarch are sheltering in the lee of a ruined cottage, and Pete is refusing, citing bastardos, Lad-Ronnies and goat shit, not necessarily in that order.
Still smiling, Historian-Anna thanks Rogelio for his informative tour, and us for attending, and we are free to head off. ‘Are you coming home with us, Pepe? Chrissie enquires. Or limping home, more like. Still, it’s all downhill.
He grimaces, wiping something suspicious from the sole of his shoe on a clump of grass. ‘No, I will probably have lunch with my sister.’
Lunch with his sister? Have we mis-translated? ‘Your sister, Pepe? Who is your sister?’
‘Yes, my sister!’
She takes a deep breath, then instantly regrets it, having failed to take into account the direction of the breeze. ‘So who is your sister, Pepe?’
He flashes me his best gap-toothed grin, and winks. ‘Ann-Hella. El Elephante, of course!’
CHAPTER 17. THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE, SPANISH STYLE.
Early-retirement agrees with me, and never in my life have I felt so well. The sunshine of course, all that wonderful Vitamin D, (or is it C?) just waking up in the morning and glancing out the window has my spirits soaring. The deep blue sky, the warmth, the wondrous light. Even rainy days don’t seem so bad, because we know the sun will return, before long. And keep this to yourself, please, but the odd damp afternoon lets us catch up on all those little jobs we were meaning to do, but just never got around to. By any measure, health-wise, our decision, all right all right, my original idea, to move over here, has been a resounding success.
There are of course a few negative points, just give me a minute while I think of one…. oh yes, the ground is very hard here. No, don’t laugh, it is true! Without a stitch of carpet, apart from the front door mat, these marble tiles in the house don’t half play hell with my knees, every time I get down on them, looking for my shoes, which ‘someone’ has kicked under the sofa, or doing a little job (on rainy afternoons only, of course), so I have had to learn to ease myself to the floor, rather then bump down, but I forget, from time to time, because I am a bear of very little brain, as you all know. So my Rhodesias, to give them their local name, are taking their fair share of wear and tear.
Another downside, now I come to think of it, is the terrain, all these damned hills. Well what did he expect, I hear you say, living halfway up a ruddy great mountain? Well yes, we knew there was this big rocky thing, behind the town, of course, and ours is a mere hillock, compared to some of the humungous ones away to the east. It’s just that my favourite forms of exercise, cycling and running, are such blooming hard work. Been a lifelong cyclist, from my tiny pavement trike, when little more than a toddler, graduating to a Raleigh all-steel at about five, a shop-bought racer at around eleven, and finally, a self-assembled road bike, a Mercian frame from Derby, Reynolds 531 tubing for those in the know, with Campagnolo Italian components. And it is here with me now, downstairs in El Woodshed, gathering dust, having benefited from a full factory re-spray the year before we moved, and then ‘smuggled’ over in the caravan. Just a shame I never get the time to ride it.
And running? On these cobblestones? Play havoc with my knees, they do, or that is my excuse, and I am sticking to it. Like the switchback at the funfair, these streets, and a couple of miles of painful jogging, before breakfast, is about all I can manage, these days.
All of which is leading towards a confession, as you might have already guessed. And here it is. What with the relaxed lifestyle, the sunbeds, the complete absence of stress, apart from when the water board rear their ugly heads above the parapet, the rich food and wine, but mainly the wine, I may have put on the odd pound or two, in the last twenty or so months. What? OK, OK, a few pounds, a number of them, in fact. Say again? ALL RIGHT! Don’t keep going on about it. Half a stone! Satisfied? At least my ‘House Orderly’ skills from my Wolf Cub days fifty years ago didn’t go to waste, shifting my trouser buttons slightly to the left. OH STOP! THIS IS THE LAST TIME, OK? Half an inch to the left.
But as a serious point, for anyone contemplating moving over here, just keep an eye on those bathroom scales, OK?
Luckily, Chrissie has no such worries, charging round the town of an evening visiting her pupils. In fact, she even bought a fitness tracker, and regularly puts me to shame, over dinner, announcing her score for that day. No, her main problem has been coping with the dry air over here. Just about the
whole of inland Spain is between fifteen-hundred and two-thousand feet above sea level, and that is before you start adding on the mountains, plus the fact that they build towns and villages at the top, rather than in the valleys. Better to spot approaching invaders, I imagine. Our town is the equivalent of living the best part of the way up Snowdonia, for instance, that bit where the little trains pass each other, keen mountaineer as I am. That is where the similarities end, of course, there having been no olive trees growing on the side of Mount Snowdon, the last time we took that stunning train ride, well you surely didn’t think we walked, did you, together with the reality that any high ground in the UK would be suitably moist, and humid. Over here, the climate is dry and dusty, and she does suffer from a blocked nose, and a dry cough, quite regularly.
But having said all that, we are both well. We feel well, we look well, according to our friends in the UK, every time we visit. We are the epitome of wellness. So much so that, having obtained our Spanish medical cards, and registered with the local GP surgery, ably assisted by our good friend Juan, not long after we moved here, we have thankfully had no cause to use them. We did have one brief interaction with the medical profession, a few months ago, when Chrissie lost a filling, one Friday evening, allegedly during the consumption of one of my speciality Rick Stein prawn paellas, an accusation I totally deny, on the grounds that there are no bones in prawns, or rice. Still got the blame, though… During the night, she developed a raging toothache, and it was clear by morning she was in considerable distress, the side of her face all swollen. Now, my cure-all remedy for just about anything involves a bottle of whisky, and specifically for toothache, I slosh it round the offending area, rub it over the gum, and hold it inside my mouth, hamster-style. Never fails to bring relief. Tastes good, too. Trouble is, my wife cannot stand the taste of Scotch, having got horribly drunk on it as a teenager, so had to resort to more traditional methods, namely aspirin, which did no good whatsoever.
So there we were, that Saturday morning, dentists all closed, and us not registered with one in any case, with the prospect of a miserable, and for one of us, painful weekend ahead. ‘I think Marie at the library has a cousin who’s a dentist’ she winced. ‘I will give her a call, tomorrow evening, see if she can get me an emergency appointment, Monday morning. Meanwhile, could you pop down the pharmacy and get me some stronger painkillers, please?’
Inevitably, leaving the house, I got trapped. ‘Neighbour! Where are you going?’ Chrissie might well have toothache, but I have Loli-ache, for which there is no known cure. I duly explained that La Cristina had dolor de dientes, whereupon Her Annoyingness demanded to examine the patient. She gripped my wife around the neck, like a sack of potatoes, and proceeded to prod the affected area vigorously, which I imagine did no good whatsoever, then announced her diagnosis. ‘Take her to the oor-hen-thee-ya, neighbour!’
The where? Is she saying hospital? No, I imagine the Spanish for ‘hospital’ is ospital. The pharmacy? No, that is farmacia, we know that one. I am as much use as a chocolate teapot, in these situations. ‘The urgency!’ Chrissie wailed, from the corner of her mouth. ‘You know, that emergency place, just past where we leave the car. Where they park the ambulance. Come on, get me down there, for pity’s sake.’
Easier said than done, in this country, running the gauntlet in the street. ‘Go to the pharmacy, neighbour!’ ‘Give her some whisky!’ ‘Tie some cotton round her tooth, the other end around the door, and slam it shut!’ My own teeth were starting to ache, I can tell you, by the time we got clear of the neighbours, that morning.
So what is this oor-hen-thee-ya place, given there are absolutely no signs indicating anything whatsoever. A minor injuries hospital? A clinic? A refuge for the poor overworked ambulance drivers, somewhere they might sit all day drinking coffee and eating tapas, given that the sound of sirens in this town is about as rare as hen’s teeth? Entering the building, through an unmarked door, was like a visit to the Marie Celeste visitor centre on a wet Monday in November. Deserted. Nothing. An empty space. We followed a corridor, eventually reaching a set of steps, at the top of which was a white-coated, middle-aged woman perched behind a desk, moodily filing her nails. Was this reception? Or was she the sweeper-up? ‘My wife has very bad toothache’ I announced, ‘could we see a doctor, please?’ I swear if she tells us to go away I will scream. Could have been down the pharmacy, bought the tablets, gone home, Chrissie could have taken the required dosage and been feeling entirely better, by now.
She looked up from her cuticles and frowned, as if the appearance of patients was a complete shock to her system. ‘Are you English?’ she enquired. I confirmed we indeed were, whereupon she picked up a phone, dialed a number, and babbled a jumble of Spanish bracketed by the words ‘toothache’ and ‘English.’ Just then a door swung open and a whiskery old man popped his head out. ‘Come, please!’ I had to stifle the urge to burst out laughing. His sudden appearance was so dramatic, it reminded me of a Monty Python sketch, and if John Cleese had appeared that would have been curtains, for me. Blimey, what is it with these old people in these jobs? Are there no youngsters working anywhere? This fellow has to be well past his retirement date, white coat hanging from his bony frame, and I daren’t look down in case he is wearing carpet slippers.
Indicating us to sit, he proceeded to ignore his patient, and addressed his questions to me. ‘Where does your woman have her pain?’ Oooo, you are on dodgy ground here, grandad. I can feel Chrissie bridling. Not right, is it ‘your woman’ in the twenty-first century? Still, other countries, and all that. I smiled sweetly, indicating my top gum, and left cheek, in a I think that might be where the pain is but she is only a chattel, after all, kind of gesture. He nodded, gravely. ‘And how long has she had the pain?’ Well why don’t you ask her, she is sitting right next to you, and you are actually talking across her. Suddenly I was struck by a thought. Is this actually a hospital, or a Vet? Does he think Chrissie is my companion-animal? Surely Eric Idle will walk in any minute, and start talking in a high, squeaky voice?
Exaggeratedly, I turned towards my wife. ‘And how long have you had the pain, woman?’
She was shaking, but whether with rage or subterranean mirth it was impossible to tell. ‘Since last night.’
I inclined my head and looked the vintage Vet squarely in the eye. ‘She says, since last night’ I confirmed, resisting the urge to add stop asking me questions, she is only a servant. Not a flicker. I was half-expecting him to smile and go all right, all right, I know they’re supposed to be equal, nowadays, but what can you do? No.
He delved into his antique leather briefcase, rummaged around for a few seconds and with a flourish produced a foil-wrapped strip of a dozen tablets. ‘Tell your woman to take one, three times a day.’ And he stood up, opening the door, to indicate the end of the consultation, adding ‘Have a good holiday!’ Through gritted teeth, even though they were presumably hurting like hell, Chrissie managed a half-smile, I gave him a full ‘gracias’, more from the point of view of the entertainment value than his bedside manner, and we shuffled out into the corridor. Presumably now we have to give our details to cuticle-woman, but no. She had vanished. Disappeared from the face of the earth, seemingly. We were back on the Marie Celeste.
Stumbling into the blinding sunshine, my wife was scrabbling urgently at the foil to extract a tablet, then groped around in her bag to locate the small bottle of water she usually carries, glugging gratefully. I turned to face her. ‘So tell me, woman, in the interests of customer satisfaction, on a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends?’
‘One to ten?’ she choked, coughing violently. ‘One to bloody ten? If we were in the sixteenth century, probably an eight.’ She took another swig, then started grinning. ‘Mind you, think about this morning. An unidentifiable building, a woman who might have been a cleaner, a doctor older than Hippocrates himself, free tablets, and we were in and out in ten minutes flat. And, I was so angry in there that
my toothache has gone, more or less. I call that a result, don’t you?’
Sunday evening Chrissie, feeling much better after taking the course of tablets, calls Marie, who in turn calls her dentist cousin, Alphonso, and arranges for an emergency appointment at eight-thirty on the Monday, where we duly present ourselves at the allotted hour. Strange sort of place for a surgery, being more like a huge private house, massive wooden double doors, and a traditional bell-pull, which my wife tugs, having beaten me to it. Must have been an olive-oil baron’s residence, I imagine, back in the day. A distant chiming is audible from within, and after a discrete period the door is opened by a young teenage girl, followed by a powerful blast of stale cigarette smoke. Blimey, is this a dentist, or a nightclub from about the end of the last century? Smoking is of course prohibited in Spain, same as the UK, and by and large the locals seem to obey, although there can be the odd bit of crafty lighting-up, towards closing time, but I haven’t sniffed anything remotely approaching this for over a decade.
It seems however we are expected. ‘Plees, thees way’ giggles the girl, ‘my father she expect you!’ And into the poisonous atmosphere we step. I glance at Chrissie in a bloody hell, how do they allow this in a public place kind of way, and I thought we were supposed to have the first appointment? Some inconsiderate Spaniard has clearly been puffing away in the waiting room, and I feel overwhelmingly sorry for the girl having to put up with this, and why didn’t her father, a medical professional for pity’s sake, turf the miscreant out?
Suddenly a door opens and out steps a tall, distinguished-looking man, sixties easily, mass of wavy grey hair, the image of that opera singer, what was his name, I always forget, one of the Three Tenors, but not that one, exquisitely-tailored white coat hanging majestically from his elegant frame, a piano-player’s hands with long, slim fingers, all the better for manipulating dental instruments, and a fug of dense smoke wafting behind him. Placido Domingo, that was it. Or was it Jose Carreras? ‘Greeting!’ he smiles. ‘I Alphonso, cow-seen Marie. You Cristina and Juanee? Come, plees.’ And he leads us into the surgery, where amongst the dental chair, the ceiling light, the drills and a tray of implements, is an ash-tray where a half-smoked cigarette lies smoldering. Oh. My. Actual. God. He is smoking, in the surgery. Never in my lifetime… I glance at Chrissie, stifling the urge to cough, theatrically, like someone caught downwind on a bonfire night, and through the haze I can just about make out she is blinking, rapidly, with a bloody hell I am going to have to put all our clothes in the wash as soon as we get home kind of look on here face. Now don’t misunderstand me, Alphonso has every right to do whatever he likes in the privacy of his own home, and this does appear to be his own home, but in the surgery?
Sunsets and Olives 2: Back to Spain...... the madness continues! Page 36