Snork Maiden redux

Iraklion Day 13: The Waiting Room     Well this really is a waiting game. Al continues to occupy his ‘hotel room’ in the PaGNI hospital. “The Pa.G.N.I. provides secondary and tertiary health care in a wide range of clinical specialties, diagnostic and laboratory tests. It is located 8km away from the city of Heraklion in the area of Stavrakia, next to the School of Medicine of the University of Crete.” Here we are this afternoon, enjoying the sunshine outside the 7 bed room that is Al's temporary home. His bed is next to a window and a radiator - perfect climate control! Like many Greek build ings, the walkways also provide shade as the season shifts and the sun gets higher. Of course, they are also used as a smoking area! I wish we had more to report. Al feels well, the drugs are keeping his condition under control and he is being monitored. So he is safe where he is. Of course it’s an odd situation. We hav...

27 January 2022   Just a short blog to let you know how Al is getting on.  Not many pix unless you really want to see more of the cat!     Apologies to those of you who already know some of the story - this is the easiest way for me to let you all know without spending too much of my day in front of the screen. I can’t believe we have been here for almost 2 working weeks.  I don’t think that the hospital is particularly slow, just thorough.  Of course we don’t know what impact Covid is having on ICU beds and other facilities and staffing. The weather has been pretty terrible and the Greek Gov shut down non-essential business in Athens, Evia and Crete.  Crete has mainly escaped snowfall, just a lot of rain and probably some damage and flooding in rural areas (most of Crete is rural, the rest coastal).  There was a river flowing outside apartment, and that has gone away now.     Al's story so far: only one artery seriously ...

PANTEBOY I have been wanting to write this one for a while.  For reasons that may come clear below, I have chosen to do it now!  I have returned to my old blog format for a while, partly because maybe this one is more personal and I don’t want it so much ‘out there’.  It will go to my old ‘friends of Snork Maiden’ list.  So no music today!  (You are, of course, free to choose your own.). Actually I like Ravi Shankar’s CHANTS OF INDIA produced by George Harrison, but it’s not everyone’s cup of chai.   So, PANTEBOY.  Not pronounced ‘Panty Boy’ as in a man with a hobby (now listen to Pink Floyd’s ARNOLD LANE ).  It is actually pronounced ‘rantevoû’ and means ‘appointment - get it?  No?  Then try saying it aloud! In lower case the effect is lost completely! παντεβου     I suppose I am using this as an illustration of just how awkward learning a completely different language can be.  This was underlined by a recent phone c...