now get this werk

HIIIIIII!!!! I'm SOOOOOO SORRRRYYYYY I'M LATE!!!!!!!! I got on the metro at the right time, early if anything - extra careful, don't want a repeat of last week - I came straight from the doctors - yeah, I'm fine, thanks, no don't worry, oh I know, again! - anyway it just stopped underground for like twenty minutes for no reason! There must have been ANOTHER accident, or another strike? There was nothing I could do! Why don't they TELL you when they're planning one, I checked Twitter, El País, the transport website but THAT'S not been updated since 2011, public transport in this city is sooooooo unreliable, it must be the government/the crisis/the cuts? I just can't BELIEVE I'm late for work AGAIN and I am SO sorry I honestly don't understand how it happened, I will make sure I allow EVEN MORE time for this next time and if you want I will plan and do all your classes for you for ever and ever AMEN: me. to every teacher, every day.

GPOY

Malpractice Monday

I've seen more Spanish doctors than I have British. This is probably a combination of calamitous holidays, working with children, and not having my parents in Madrid to tell me to stop being neurotic. Either way, where diagnoses are concerned I consider myself more or less on par with a second year medical student, having watched all 15 seasons of ER more than three times and following NHS Choices on Twitter, and up until now have felt quite confident in my Spanish medical knowledge and vocabulary. Not so. I have been rather invasively put in my place on that front.

If you work in the public sector here you need a justificante from your doctor if you have any time off. This really can be a ballache: if I am bed ridden with food poisoning or can't hold my own head up my flu is so bad, the last thing I want to do is trek to the medical centre, explain my situation, have my EU health card photocopied about eight times and then sit with the [fellow] unwashed masses for an hour and a half before being told 'it's the weather' and given a letter to confirm I'm not fit for purpose. Anyway, needs must, and I was feeling ropey beyond Lemsip's salvation last week and would rather have commuted to hell than travel 45 minutes to the screaming teenagers I so love to educate.

Went to the doctor. She was talking really fast and I was half out of it anyway I was feeling so crap. I thought I had a good grip with describing my symptoms, her eyes narrowed a few times which I was unimpressed with, I am not a skiver! But I was following her alright, I thought. I was nodding away like a Churchill dog, just give me the letter and let me go back to bed, This Morning is on and I don't want to miss the cooking bit with Gino D'Acampo. Also want to find out if I've won this month's competition, I could really use a holiday to Bali and £35,000 in tax-free cash. She decides to examine me. Fine. I've got a bad cold but alright have a look if you must. Heart rate normal, temperature a bit high, then she tells me to lie down on the bed. Why? She cracks out some blue latex gloves. I don't know what's going on. I'm feeling vulnerable. I do it. She's like, 'roll over'. Erm alright. 'Pull down your pants'. Come again? I protest, she insists it is necessary. What on earth did I say to warrant this kind of investigation? I've got a runny nose! I'm lying on my side, gritting my teeth, thinking of England, and before you can say 'sodomy' I've crossed into a new level of 'Never Have I Ever' with a woman in a white coat.

The phone rings. SHE ANSWERS. I am lying there like a baboon, and the doctor has a two minute conversation with God knows who, she has time to ask about the other person's children so we can assume she's very much on a chilled one, I on the other hand face the wall, still exposed to the elements, wondering which hand she used to pick up the receiver.

There's a knock on the door. She has got to be joking. Two men come into the room. Whether they are doctors or not I have no idea, I'm still facing the wall thinking about the wrongs I have committed in life to deserve this. About a century later they leave and I unclench, slightly. 

She comes back over, apologises (not profusely, I add). I squeak out a 'no pasa nada' to let her know we are cool. I just want to get out now. She seems to casually notice the position that I am STILL in and tells me it all looks fine down (up?) there. WELL I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT SO. She signs me off work for 48 hours - enough time to recover from post traumatic stress disorder? - And I waddle home replaying the event in my head to try and see where it all went wrong. There's a first time for everything. 

Spain's proposed abortion law, a step backwards?

If you've ever been to school, you've probably discussed the issue of abortion. Ideal debate fodder for RE and Citizenship lessons, your knowledge of the wealth of pro/con arguments about any controversial topic gets multiplied when you study languages. Want to know why I'm against capital punishment, in French? Let's do it. My opinion on legalising Class A drugs, in Italian? I'll have a go. There are only so many oral exams you can endure before you're arguing with your Spanish teacher about why AQA should accept 'Aniston vs. Jolie' as your submitted debate topic (I was prevented from actually testing this one out. It was 2008: these wounds take time to heal).

Pro-life or pro-choice (and it will become clear that I am, unsurprisingly, very firmly pro-choice), most people are familiar with the common arguments on both sides. Living in Madrid this year has brought with it a new wave of protests: 2011/2012 was dominated by educational cuts and reforms; this time round it's a controversial bill that will ban abortion except in cases of rape or when the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother's health.

When you live in the centre of a capital city where every other week a new mass demonstration is to be beheld, where evidence of the economic crisis is everywhere from beggars' placards to bank-window graffiti to meal deals in restaurants, it's easy to roll your eyes and ignore it when you see a few thousand people marching by. This Saturday as I tried (for ten minutes) to strategically cross Gran Via to get past hundreds of chanting women to go the gym, I found a bit of an anger building inside me, and not just frustration at not being able to cross the road (it's fate telling me not to go to the gym, and I should really listen). I didn't think my views on abortion were particularly strong but I suddenly felt real empathy for these people who now face having freedoms that they, I, most women, at least in Western European countries, take for granted.

I have never considered that it would be possible for developed countries to revert to imposing more socially conservative laws, particularly in Spain where the standard mindset seems to be super liberal, surely to distance itself from its repressive past: the Francoist dictatorship (which ended in 1975) still relatively fresh in the memory of most of the country's older generation. Any Almodóvar film will tell you that Spain's cultural makeup is far more accepting and diverse than it once was. Spain's left and right are divided in a different way to the more class-based division in Britain, and at least where I work and with most people I meet, the 'centre' seems to be very much to the left of the spectrum - something which at times, even I find frustrating. The concept of a uniform in a state school has been met with horror, as if it's some declaration of support for the former fascist regime. No: it's just orderly! This makes the proposed changes to the law all the more shocking.

Pro-choice graffiti in Tirso de Molina

Of course, the bill has its supporters. After all, the governing Partido Popular, Spain's major Conservative party, is ruling for a reason. Like anywhere, political allegiances depend largely on location and income. In Britain, however, most Conservatives I know would still consider restrictions on abortion a major infringement: it's an issue that lies beyond the political sphere. It's a religious sore point, and Spain is still a Catholic country.

Is this bill a way for the Spanish government to appease the Church, whom it shares close links with? Or even a distraction from the deeply entrenched economic problems the country continues to suffer? The worry seems to be that Rajoy's government will take further steps in this direction, that 39 years of progress since the fascist era have meant nothing.

Spanish culture and history since the start of the Civil War (1936-9) continue to fascinate me, this proposed law and the reactions that it has brought with it -'My ovaries, not those of priests or politicians' - seem to expose a society that remains fragmented in the face of many issues, and that some might argue is still recovering from its difficult past. I can only hope that feminism wins this particular battle, and feel fortunate that in my own country such restrictive changes are not on the table and for the time being, my ovaries are 'mine'.

NB: Team Aniston. Obviously.

IKEA

The start of a new year for some reason means doing up the house. Around this time about six years ago I expressed an interest in redecorating my violently pink bedroom and after a lot of tantrums and a bit of emotional blackmail my father agreed to drive me up to Ikea Nottingham. Today it finally happened.

Ikea is genuinely a pit of hell for me but a necessary one. I have never had a pleasant experience going there- and due to my parents' many public (pre-divorce) arguments held in the picture framing department (one of which my year 5 maths teacher happened to be present for.. I remember the shame on Monday morning) - visits tend to encourage foul memories to raise their ugly heads. Regardless, we've all had therapy since our last trip when my father just gave up and walked out and we drove back to Leicester with nothing, so I thought I'd be safe to brave it again.

Wrong.

When you are trying to assess whether every mild abdominal cramp or burp is in fact the early stages of the Norovirus the best place to be is probably not the world's number one furniture retailer, during the end of season sales. Why do they sell so much crap?? Why don't they have any windows? Or make it obvious what measurements things are?

5 minutes in, (Living showroom at this point) despite 15 people standing within about 4 feet of him my dad decided to announce to the [fake] room, "I AM ALREADY AT THE POINT WHERE I'M READY TO SELF HARM, CAN WE GET A MOVE ON PLEASE?" I don't know if this was worse than thirteen years ago when my parents had that fight, a few people were actually laughing at him this time so I laughed too, I don't think he realised other people heard because when I laughed he started miming slitting his wrists and that's when people edged away from him. Understandable perhaps, in Living, where all they offer for entertainment is a sofa. Childrens Ikea is comedy: going up the bunkbed ladders even though they've put a big plastic slate over the rungs and sitting on the top bunks watching the shop assistants below like tree frogs in the rainforest is one way you can make this department a playground; Office provides equipment and space for swivel chair races; and Bedroom beats all with a rare opportunity to literally go to sleep in public. Despite all this we are still scraping the barrel here to make a trip entertaining.

but at what emotional cost?

I came out of this with a bit of bookshelf that had broken, a duvet cover that I got 10 years ago and spilt something on so bought again, and a 3 pack of loofahs. The total at the cash register was £390.47. My sister Joanna and I disappeared pretty swiftly after seeing that pop up. Natalie on the till kindly asked if my dad had a Family card. He responded in the affirmative, in a tone that if we were to be sympathetic/soft could be described as 'mardy' but more truthfully as hostile, if not rude, unpleasant and 'borderline violent'. I felt sorry for Natalie because the card got him 10% off. Not a discount to be sniffed at given today's grand total if you ask me but I didn't mention it to my father. He doesn't appreciate my running commentary like most people do. In this case he was actually unable to speak for around twenty-five minutes after making the transaction, unless you count unintelligible mutterings, which I don't. He was pouting a lot and couldn't really look us in the eye. I thought it best to keep quiet about the fact I'd come out with 70p's worth of brightly coloured loofahs whereas he had chosen to buy decorative fairy lights at the age of 57, along with a selection of knives and rugs and pillow protectors. (What do you need to protect your pillows from??) Any smug comments I made about my minimal contribution to his bankruptcy would have either been ignored, hissed at, or met with a punch in the ribs from my sister who is desperate for him to forget that the sheepskin rug she 'needed' cost £30. Quite a pretty penny given the average price in that shop. I piped down.

Fortunately for Joanna and me, a woman eating in the cafe had the forethought to pack tweezers and a compact mirror in her handbag for her visit, so as we enjoyed our meatballs she was going for it on her beard. Dad perked up remarkably at this point and cracked his iPhone out to a take a picture of her over his shoulder and send to his friend. He was able to talk almost normally at this point. Until we told him we had to go on a 20 minute detour to a 24 hour Tesco to get contact lens solution. This did not go down well.

Dad's years living in Sweden have made him the country's biggest fan. We have spent summers there, weekend breaks to Stockholm and winter breaks skiing, so the whole family tend to have an adoration for all things Svenska - Volvos, Abba, Astrid Lindgren, Carl Larsson, elk.......... Ikea, however, is not one of them.