Well I think that goes down as the most unusual Boxing Day I’ve ever spent. I woke after fitful sleep. I can’t lie on my left side because my shoulder hurts – it took a bang when I fell back from the wardrobe. I can’t lie on my right side as my swollen right eye hurts so I have to try sleeping on my back and have been advised to keep my head elevated by at least two pillows. I feel like I’ve been laid out in the coffin already but in my birthday suit not my best suit. And I have to get clothes past the culprits before I can go – that’s top brass I can tell you.
However the hospital Hospital Puerto del Mar want me to report at 09:30 so off I set in a taxi the hotel has kindly called after my profuse apologies for their disturbed night of gore and mayhem. I had to take a taxi because from the interior of an ambulance I had no idea where we had gone and when I came out I got straight into a taxi back to the now calm hotel without really being very aware of my route or surroundings.
I report to Triage 1 and a ticket is printed out for me along with a page of sticky labels with my name, date of birth, admission number and cause of admission ‘Caida’ – fall. I wait for about 15 minutes before being called into Trauma 1 to explain to a doctor exactly what had happened. Well I knew sock, calcetin, take off, quitar, caida, fall, armorio, wardrobe and manija, handle. So I manage to concoct a narrative after which he nods sagely and sits me down to examine the cuts and stitches which he approves, does a name and number, day of the week, address in Spain etc as a concussion test and says he’d like a face specialist to check me over to see if the stitches will suffice or whether I need plastic surgery. Back to the waiting room for rather longer this time. Just like English hospitals there are too many people for the seats available and the one unisex loo is out of service. So I stand patiently, glad I’d had the foresight to bring my Kindle on which I was reading Kamila Shamsie’s excellent Burnt Shadows which combines Japan with India and Pakistan in a timely, tense tale.
A lady in blue with a face mask comes by and somehow I know she’s my face doctor. She must have seen a few others and then after a while she calls me into Trauma 2 and checks my eyesight with torch and fingers to count – no double vision and I’m glad that’s an index finger you’re holding up. She declares that the sutures will do the job and that no plastic surgery is required but they do want me to go to x-ray to check that no bones were broken – I think I would have known. So back to stand in a corridor outside the radiography room until my name is called. Eventually I enter and two young rather giggly radiographers are keen to know how to pronounce my unusual nombre. They try Raggett for size a few times and I tell them they’ve got it. A quick dose of rays and then back to the waiting area. The original doctor sees me again and tells me a nurse will give me a tetanus jab and dress the corner of my brow which persists in bleeding (sangrando) adding another verb participle to my vocabulary. He also said I should go to my Primary Care Centre in three days (it’ll be Monday at my surgery which will be the fifth day so maybe the stitches can come out too which he suggested should be in a week). The nurse then stings me horribly trying to clean up the mess a bit more and applies a big cotton pad with tape over my eye to stop the bleeding. Then I’m told I’m free to go and thank them all profusely for what has been excellent attention to a stupid accident. The worst part of it is that I had discarded a previous pair of freebie Bam socks because they kept slipping on my wood floors. Total idiot. Also I once heard a radio show a while back in which the presenters were discussing how sitting down to put socks on and off was a sign of old age. From now on I’m old.
I need a pharmacy and a loo by now so I walk away from the Emergency Department where I note I’ve been for just on three hours so I stride off towards what I believe to be the main Avenida Juan Carlos II that runs north-south through the new part of the city. It is and I find a pastry shop with coffee and churros so I set into those, recalling from goodness knows where that after a shock it was good to eat or drink something sweet. Well I’m not putting sugar in my coffee but a sugar coated churro will do the job. It also of course has a loo. Refreshed and emboldened I decide to catch a bus back up to the old city and my hotel. It worked fine with a one euro ten cents flat fare and there’s a pharmacy opposite the hotel so I get my prescription filled but have to repeat my now more fluent tale of Christmas Night. Jokes about amateur bullfighting and what the other guy looks like happen in Spanish too but armed with amoxicillin I go back to my now spotless room. I take pills and then a kind of, I suppose, post-shock lethargy sets in. I did of course sleep very little during the night and sit in an armchair and drift off a bit. Then alert again and turning on iPad mini to watch the footie later, I realise that what I’d written about Christmas Eve and Day had not saved properly so I had to recreate all that whereupon several photos duplicated themselves. Foreign internet, weird WordPress or just DRD – defective Raggett digits I’ll never know.
I feel I ought to go out and grab some lunch before it’s time for Prime to watch Watford at Sheffield United – my Blades-supporting nephew has wished us Happy Christmas and more wins but not today. But by the time I’ve thought about where or what it’s too late so I settle down to see the excitement of a lead unfold followed by a stupid penalty for their equaliser. So that’s draws home and away but at least this one had a proper goal and we’re off the bottom of the table. The later Leicester v Liverpool match is much more exciting and after that I decide that fasting will do me no harm and retire again for a disturbed but better sleep.
Friday morning sees me shower (avoiding getting stitches wet) pack and take my bags to the car. I then go for breakfast in the Plaza Espana and realise that my decision to visit the chapel with the Goyas before driving back to Malaga was muddled with 24 hours clock confusion – my flight is at 4.25 not the 6.25 in my head. However I can still make it easily albeit it not by the fully scenic route intended. But it gives my time to admire a few more of the fabulous buildings and squares of Cadiz – just why is it only men taking breakfast? – and amble through its cobbled streets to find that the Oratorio is open.
I go up to the chapel in which there are five frescoes around the ceiling, three by Goya although from the distance and the lighting you’d be hard pressed to tell it if you’d just happened to wander in in ignorance. Still it had been on the tick list.
Back one last time to the car park – huge so I always wrote my bay number on the ticket – set up TomTom for the car rental place and off I go. While we had previously gone all along the coast down to Tarifa to look across at Africa and then along past Gibraltar, today’s faster route went diagonally across Cadiz province giving me only a fleeting view of Gibraltar – It’ll be interesting to see what happens about that in the next few years. Then it was along through celeb/gangster country Estepona, Puerto Banus, Mijas, Fuengirola, Marbella, and on to Malaga. They are amused to see that the car has no damage, just me, so my tale is told again with winces and sympathetic handshakes before a shuttle bus whisks me into a surprisingly quiet Malaga airport. I’m quickly through security and off to the Sala VIP lounge thanks to my subscription to Priority Pass. It’s also nearly empty and I catch up on emails and messages before heading to the gate.
As is the new norm with Ryanair the Priority Q is longer than the paupers’. But in, I think, a first for me we board through an airbridge not by walking across the tarmac and climbing steps. The captain urges people to stow their stuff quickly as we can actually make our 16:25 take off slot if they get a move on – since we’d seen him and the cabin crew walk past us twenty minutes earlier maybe they could have got the plane loading sooner. However we’re in the air on time and I can construct the last blog from this excellent but eventful Iberian adventure. Obviously I’ll have to post it later when there’s some wifi – probably back home. Where I now am.
Well after a perfect journey back as far as my car at Stansted after which I endured a thirty minute hold up for an accident on the A12 and then a diversion for a burst water main close to home in Kidbroke. Is that an omen?
We had decided to go for a suite as we were there for such an unusually long stay and it was a decision well made – it was huge with a living room, bedroom, massive bathroom and a balcony.
On another day we also decided to make a further excursion to La Rabida where Columbus set sail for the Indies and found America. There’s a dock on the banks of the Rio Tinto where full size replicas of the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María can be visited. They are frighteningly small for voyages of that duration and 
danger. There’s an excellent dockside exhibition of what life was like in Columbus’ time and a great idea of how the galley was the most important part of the vessel.
Just back inland is the monastery in which Columbus signed his papers confirming that Ferdinand and Isabella had come up with the cash for his voyage. It’s all set in a park with specimen plants and massive palms and a very pleasant few hours were whiled away including a stop for lunch which made somebody very happy.
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