We set off in the van heading south. now we are exploring the Ports de Beseit.
Walking along the rivers is like being in a fresh unsullied world. We have seen some magical places.
for now…this is just a taster
a change of scene
Author: Kate Wilson
Virtual Vermut
I’ve needed a few actual vermuts this week.
It was the sort of week you dread in advance and then when it’s taken step by step – poc a poc – it isn’t so bad. But I was feeling a bit on the edge – easily irritable – could it be the Spring? That seems to be the explanation for most things at the moment.
We got our potatoes in at last.
For the first time I have planted some in sacks on the terrace and the rest of them are in four rows in a large allotment in Llica D’Amunt.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee
And live alone in the bee loud glade
Marc, the owner, has lots of vegetables growing there down by the river Tenis, with a chicken run and cherry blossom trees. Bonnie had to be stopped from digging holes – she seems to have forgotten how to behave on a vegetable patch or perhaps she was just over-excited
In 90 days we should be eating our own Charlottes and Pentland Javelins.
Early one morning Bonnie was unusually restless and something in her little plaintive whines made me decide to get up and actually take her out rather than just open the door to the terrace. It was 6am. She led me rapidly through the empty streets, down to the New Park
A dog with a mission. Once there she found some grass and began to munch. It was fascinating how she chose which bits to eat and which to reject. Pure instinct
If we were sitting down now to share a drink I might tell you stories about the family party we had at the weekend. We had planned a barbecue on the terrace and even though it was cloudy and threatening rain, we went ahead. It wasn’t cold – just a little breezy. But so lovely to be outside. Somewhere along the line we had forgotten that not everyone likes to sit outside on a cloudy day in early Spring. There were lots of complaints. And I drank lots more vermuts to keep myself smiling!
These are calçots!
The celebration? Funnily enough this year both father and son have significant birthdays.
The resident adolescent is now officially an adult.
We are watching closely for signs of the change.
I made three cakes – two of them were disasters as the sponges rose very high in the oven and promptly collapsed on coming out. For the third I gave up the idea of cake and instead made chocolate brownies at the last minute. In the fridge were chocolate candles given to the boy by a friend – one 1 and one 8. Unfortunately by the day of the party he had nibbled off half of the 8 and so we had a cake for a 13year old!
The birds are beginning to pair up. I’m looking out for swallows.
People are starting to talk about Spring! And when they say “La Primavera” they say it with a twinkle in the eye. It means much more here than sprouting potatoes and budding trees
Bonnie met her friend Azlan in the park -it’s good to see her so happy.
There is certainly something in the air. something explosive and strong. For me it meant having to hold my tongue on several occasions when I felt frustrated. I need to be out of the city – somewhere I can ‘live in the bee loud glade’. Perhaps not alone but certainly away from the constant presence of computers games and crisp packets, disinterested shop assistants, piles of rubbish on the ground and shops full of bored unfriendly people buying more clothes.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings
There midnight’s all a glimmer and noon a purple glow
And evening’s full of the linnets wings
Daily Rumi
I can’t stop taking pictures of the blossom. I love this time of year
And Bonnie is always my favourite model – she attracts a lot of attention as we walk through town. It’s such a pity she doesn’t like strangers touching her.
Almost every day someone passes by saying ‘Que guapa!’ And they don’t mean me.
I have a new thing on my mobile phone called Daily Rumi. Quotes from Rumi are a lovely way to start or end the day. Here is the one I just read:
“It is love that holds everything together, and it is the everything also”
Happy Spring to you all!
La Mútua
I have joined the private health system.
If you are a regular here you might remember that about a year ago I hurt my hand in the van door. I won’t make you revisit the details of what happened in the underground car park – I still can’t bear to think of it.
It was agony for a few weeks and then gradually healed up but there was always a strange sensation around the wound and even when it stopped hurting I wouldn’t say it was back to normal.
Then about 8 months ago a lump appeared over the finger joint and this has got bigger and more painful as time went on.
Ok, that’s the background and I only tell you the details as an introduction to my experience of health care here in Catalunya.
According to leaflets found in the health centres, every person resident here is entitled to a health card which provides free services at doctors and hospitals and reduced price drugs.
However….although I have been here three years and am empadronated in Granollers (it’s a list of people who officially live in an area) and come from an EU country, I have never been able to get a health card, the Tarjeta Sanitaria or CAP card.
Everyone in my Catalan class – from Africa, from Morocco, from other parts of Spain – have CAP cards. My friends from Germany and Australia have CAP cards. But I can’t get one.
Different officials give different reasons for this but in the end it comes down to the fact that I am from the UK. If I get a form from the National Insurance in Newcastle saying that I receive no benefits from the social security system then I can apply for a card. But this would mean that I had opted out of the Health Service in the UK and as I return home every year and always go to visit my doctor there, and up to recently was being monitored for kidney stones, I don’t want to opt out. I want to go here when I am in Catalunya and there when I am in the UK. I can’t really see the problem.
This is why I didn’t do anything when I damaged my hand last year. I waited for it to get better. Which it did. Then it got worse again and I found myself here without a doctor to turn to.
We went to the Urgency doctor in the local surgery. After waiting for almost an hour in a very dirty waiting room I saw a doctor who took a quick look and pronounced that I had a lump on my finger and that she couldn’t send me to a specialist as I was only receiving urgent treatment.
I then looked into private health care. Most of the arrangements cost about 200 euros per month.
A friend of a friend very kindly took a look at the finger and thought it might be infected and needed looking at by a doctor.
Finally someone pointed me in the direction of La Mútua – which as its name suggests offers various levels of membership of a mutual organisation providing health care. Anyone here with a bit of money seems to be a member. I used to be surprised when friends said casually they were off to see a gynaecologist but now I understand how easy it is here. For 30 euros a month I can go and see a specialist almost immediately. I pay each time for a visit or a treatment but it is at a much reduced rate. The other option was to pay more each month, be a full member and have everything included.
The building of the Mútua towers over a central square in Granollers and inside there is an impressive list of specialities. I was shocked to see how many I could imagine using – ginecologia, urologia, pneumologia, even perhaps in the near future, geriatria!
Today was my first visit. I saw Dr Toro who I chose for his name. He works in traumatologia and he speaks English. He sent me off to book in for an x-ray and an ultrasound. Because of Easter I can’t go next week but the week after I should be several steps closer to sorting out my lump!
This is not an advertisement for the Mútua – I’ll let you know how it goes and what I think of it after I’ve had the treatment. But it is interesting that here so many people are in private health schemes and accept it as completely normal.
Water Does Not Resist
Saturday was a beautiful sunny day. We left Granollers and the industrial zone of Valles Oriental behind us and headed north to Sant Hilary Sacalm
Sant Hilary Sacalm is known as the town with a hundred fountains. Two generations ago it was visited annually by hundreds of Catalans who came to taste the natural spring waters. There were hotels and restaurants and a busy Casino in the town centre. People came for two or three months in the summer with their whole families. Every year they would stay in the same hotel, walk the familiar pathes which lead to the different fountains, drink the various waters which were known to heal different parts of the body. They would meet the same friends every year and the annual ritual seemed as if it would never change
But now the town is quiet. Many of the hotels have closed down – one has even been knocked down to create a new plaça with a covered market. The Casino and the cinema have disappeared. Habits change and people stopped making this regular pilgrimage to drink the waters
But the fountains are still there
We visited the Font Ferro which heals the eyes
And the Font de Cirers which has the sweetest waters
And the Font del Pic which was not so popular
Font Vella is now the centre of a vast bottled water industry – presently owned by Danone!
That one was surrounded by signs saying ‘No Dogs’. Funny how big businesses go daft!
A lovely town with fresh clear air. I slept all the way home – drugged by cleanliness
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad