Episode 13: Unnatural Disasters

Goodbye NHS!!!

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that there hasn't been a blog for the past couple of weeks. I imagine that some of you are not surprised by the lack of output from this particular rotund, avuncular northern gent, as you're probably thinking that I'm sitting in a corner eating something and too busy to type. I also imagine that some of you are wondering if I'm okay; whether or not something terrible has happened to me and if I will ever put digit to keyboard ever again. If you were thinking this, why haven't you written to ask? You have my email address?!? And I imagine that some of you are sitting there, pitying your sad little lives, looking round at the list of family members you have and wondering if you can get away with telling your miserable, ancient great aunt that you have worms and don't want to come round on December 25th for fear of infecting her thirty six remaining cats.

Only 35 cats remaining now!

There is a reason for the lack of blogs over the past two weeks and that's because, quite frankly, life has been crap and I couldn't be bothered. Now I'm not going to spend the next 1925 or so words bemoaning my life here, because crap Spanish style is still 100% better than crap NHS style, so I have to be grateful for small mercies. I am, however, going to bore you all to death with tales of misery and woe. Well this is (unlucky) episode 13, so what the hell do you want? Downton Abbey? Instead, we will be taking a shared journey back over some of the previous blogs, enjoying some updates and revelling in the sheer ludicrousness (ludicrosity??) of it. 


Going back to the very first blog, I was talking about the hassle José and I went through in order to get mobile phones here in Spain. Quite frankly, it would have been cheaper to have paid to use a NASA satellite directly for all the calls I made, for when we got the first bill, it was a few centimos short of €175 for the two phones. We thought we were paying €58 a month for both! Needless to say we called the online helpdesk, although why they use the word 'help' in their title is beyond me. Quite simply, the story here in Spain is this............you bought the product, so tough titty! That's it really. Every helpdesk in every shop in this land works in the same way.


HELPDESK: Can I help you sir/madam/troglodyte?
CUSTOMER: Yes, I bought this thingumabob and it doesn't do what it says on the label
HELPDESK: Oh dear, that's terrible isn't it?
CUSTOMER: Yes it is, so what are you going to do about it?
HELPDESK: I'm afraid there's nothing we can do
CUSTOMER: But I bought this product from you and it's faulty
HELPDESK: Ah well, that was your mistake. You bought it in the first place, which you shouldn't have done as it obviously doesn't do what it says on the label!


And so it goes on. The phone company are blaming the shop (they are two separate companies here) and the shop are blaming the phone company and they are so busy arguing with one another, they've forgotten that we are in the middle of this debacle. In the end, after several useless trips to the shop (which I didn't mind as there's a sweetie shop nearby) we have had to go to the local 'Consumo' place, which is a sort of Spanish Anne Robinson 'Watchdog' set-up, although more local and with a terrible bubble perm. Our claim has gone in and we're waiting to hear. Naturally fair readers, you will be the first to hear of any success or failure in this and should we win, there's a bulls testicle in it for each of you! (Episode 12).


Moving on to Episode 5, I was talking about the kitchen and how everyone here knows what's best for us other than us, the poor consumer. Well, I'd like to report that IKEA took this onto a whole new level, which is well worth a few lines. Here in Spain, there is no such thing as fitting a reasonably priced kitchen. It's either IKEA or selling *a kidney/*an elderly relative (*delete as appropriate) in order to buy something from a fancy schmancy shop in the town centre. Naturally, we went with the former, as it seems are most of Galicia, because it's nose to nipple in that kitchen department most days. Anyway, a rather nice and very thin young man called José (everyone is called José or María here - it's the law!) came to fit the kitchen for us from the company that works alongside IKEA. He did a sterling job and then completed a complicated looking document with all the worktop measurements. As we're having a stone worktop, we've had to have a temporary one (for that read cheap and nasty!) put in until the correct one can be cut to size; namely the size that José wrote. Armed with his measurements, we went and ordered the worktop, but the guy who took the order started making changes to it. We protested, but we're only the consumer and he insisted that we had a little 'wiggle-room', whatever the hell that is in Spanish. 


Six weeks later we got a call to say the worktop was being delivered and fitted. Well, they got the first bit right! They delivered it, but they didn't fit it and you know why......? Yes of course you do. IT DIDN'T BLOODY WELL FIT! Several heated exchanges with the shop staff later, we asked the helpdesk (!!!) for the name of the manager in order that we could make a complaint. After a telephone call to "upstairs", they reluctantly gave us the name of Fred Bloggs - it seems that he manages everything these days! Anyway, we wrote, complained and asked for some form of recompense for the inconvenience, as we're not likely to have the new worktop installed for Christmas. We later found out that the name of the person they gave us was not the manager of the store, but someone of no significance at all, probably the man who runs the hotdog stall. This is something that apparently often happens here and was just to appease us in order that we had a name and would leave the store. Arrogant or what? And here's the best bit, guess what they offered us by way of compensation........?? The @*!%-ing stone worktop that didn't fit!!! They told us we could take it away. We told them they could stick it where the midnight sun doesn't shine.

We've had a response to our letter today and in it, IKEA say they can't give us any recompense because they will be footing the extra transport costs, which will serve as compensation. Yep, you got it............."Dear Mr. Fell. You shouldn't have shopped here because we're shite, so tough luck. I do hope that this won't spoil your relationship with the store and you will continue to spend money hand over fist!" I hope their meatballs go soggy.


And so we fast forward to Episodes 9 and 10 and the schools. I went to get my ID badge from the EOI (I'm still not writing it out in full. If you want to know what it means, you will have to look back!) and walked into the secretariat. There are no more queues of students so the number dispensing machine is no longer used and looked rather sad and lonely on the wall, dreaming of a past life, hanging around the sticky doughnut counter of a well known supermarket chain. I took one anyway, just for old times sake. When I walked into the office, there were two ladies in there and one guy. The two ladies in front of me were talking to one another across the desk and just totally ignored me. The guy was on the internet looking up "penis envy", or at least I think that's what the page translated as. He certainly had his head in his hands and looked like someone had just peed on his Cornflakes (other breakfast cereals are available). It took a fourth person to come in from outside the room and ask me what I needed and he served me. That place is like the Twilight Zone, I swear to you.

This seemed like an appropriate picture to put here, but was actually a Currywurst
sausage served to us in Cologne last year. It made me rather jealous!

My language skills are also improving day by day, although we're still only doing the simple present tense, which is fine if I want to tell someone what I'm doing now, but a bit of a bugger if I want to tell someone what I did 10 minutes ago.


Then there's our school; our wonderful little school with its tiny number of students and an easy life in front of Facebook and Bubble games in the afternoon, whilst telling José I'm hard at work, developing databases and suchlike. I do occasionally think of you all, slaving over a hot patient or whatever it is you do with your lives these days.........but that's all about to change. 


Last week, we worked with a company called Let's Bonus, which is a sort of posh online shopping experience for cheapskates. We've offered one of our courses at a heavily discounted amount in order to get punters in and then once they're hooked and armed with only just enough words to ask where the toilets are, we charge them the full amount for extra months once they've spent their bonus. We thought we may get around 20 or 30 bonuses bought, but we didn't. We sold 78! I'm now working like a roadrunner on acid in order to get through everything! I can't complain as we needed to start paying some bills and couldn't keep relying on the sexual favours of the water board man and the guy who comes to read the electricity meter. Mind you I'm not complaining as his flippers had started to smell a little by the end of last week.


The constant dripping of water appears to have dried up through the ceiling, although as I write this, we're in for a severe storm tomorrow, so let's see how it holds out against that. I may not have a shower that day and just take my Imperial Leather to the office instead.


You see, it's not all bad news today, although I have saved the pièce de résistance until last: the piece of bad news to end all. 


We had a posh wardrobe fitted soon after coming here, por supuesto (of course) and chose some fancy sliding doors to go on them. After about a month, the doors started to bow and by the end of month two, they were so bowed that one had to push hard on them in order to get them to go straight so that they could be opened. (Insert your own crude joke here!) The shop on this occasion knew of this problem and agreed to refit new ones at no cost and last Friday, they came over to do so. Whilst the guys were in the bedroom doing this, my father-in-law decided to saunter down the corridor. Unbeknownst to him, they had left their toolbox in the corridor, he didn't see it (well, you wouldn't think to look for a toolbox, would you? ) and promptly went arse over tit - or culo over teta! The result of this is that he has fractured his neck of femur and is in the local hospital awaiting surgery, which will not be until early next week. We're looking at the possibility of spending Christmas Day on Ward 7. Hoo-bloody-rah! I'd like to say that it never rains but it pours in my life, but there's been enough of that coming through the ceiling that I don't want to chance making it worse.


I do feel the need to finish off on a lighter note and so, harking back to Episode 11 and the language problems I've had in this country, I'd like to mention one thing someone told me a couple of weeks ago that made me laugh out loud. He's a young Jewish guy and may read this, so if you're there - and you know who you are - thanks for this great story. 


He studied Spanish at school and on coming to Spain, was introducing himself to some new people and talking to them a little about himself at their request. He wanted to say "Soy Judio" (I am a Jew) but instead said "Soy jodido", which means "I'm fucked". I couldn't think of a better way of summing up this last few weeks in my Galician life!

Get Well Soon Pepe xx