Another Hospital Visit

My wife is up in the City, looking after an aged relative over at the hospital. The relative is not long for this world and my wife has to be there the whole time. So she can’t be here, which I don’t like. Barbara has been on hand for five days so far, sleeping on a metal deckchair and I am told (rather pointedly) that there haven’t been many visitors. She can’t go very far and, she admits over the phone, she can’t have a smoke outside the hospital any more, as the new paternalistic rules from our leaders (All Hail!) mean that she has to actually leave the hospital grounds and parking lot presumably to be lost in the city somewhere before she can light up. There’s a new fellow with an important looking badge and wearing a snap-brimmed hat whose job it is to patrol the parking lot, chasing out smokers.

No wonder employment in Andalucía has risen slightly this month.
I can’t drop everything and go in and see her (and not just because of the typical male aversion to visiting hospitals). The old family car is in the knackers and, anyway, I have to look after five dogs. We have… one dog of our own… and the aged relative has four. I am using a lot of bleach and water along with a cheesy old mop to try and keep the place clean. In my opinion, several of the dogs should be ‘outside’ at all times.
Somebody has just offered to lend me a car.
If this gets out, I see that I shall have to come up with a convincing excuse…

Later: things have gone downhill. My son finally lent me his car, a real piece of crap from the SEAT people. A month ago, Barbara had put the puppy into the front seat of this same car, closed the door to get her purse from the house, only to find that this awful pile of crap had automatically locked itself. We had to break the window to get in and release the frightened dog. The key was on the front seat. It was a 'long weekend' and it took a few days before we could even order a new window. Well, bugger me, if the same thing didn't happen this morning - on another fiesta (of course). My fault this time.

The puppy is starting to dislike cars and I am wondering how many car-windows are broken by their owners? Nine out of ten? What a piece of shit car.

Later still: The following day, somebody else called to lend me a car, which turned out (to my horror) to be another SEAT - the same model. Well, I needed to go to see my wife so I put the ignition key on a bit of string around my neck so as not to be caught out by SEAT's little surprise design-flaw again. You know, having a bit of string attached to the dashboard makes it a bit difficult to drive - but I made it. Stoopid car.

And Finally: I received this from a friend who has just been giving an interview to a British television company.

I read your blog about the Seat, And thought I would tell you this story.

ITV arrived in our garden on Friday at 9.00. They followed their normal practice of putting all the equipment in the back of the hire car, battery packs, boom mikes, cameras, etc.

After discussing what they wanted to do, they went to the car to get out the gear. Only to find that the last person to go in the boot had shut the hatch and all the doors had locked.

A mad dash to SEAT in Vera, did no good and they ended up smashing the back window, The hire company wanted the car to go back to the rental company in Malaga that day, but after negotiations it was decided that Lorca would be OK as long as it was returned immediately. On a two day shoot this was the last thing they needed.

I sent them your story and have received a response:

This is BRILLIANT. I have forwarded it to everyone here. At least we are not the only ones to have fallen into SEATs evil plan! We all feel much better after reading this.