Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

I recently had to take my daughter to our GP. Nothing major, an infection had taken residence on my wee bairn’s face, and we wanted to find out what it was and how she could get rid of it. As we sat in the semi-empty room, surrounded by a sea of chairs arranged uniformly, thoughts of mortality assailed me. These were not the result of mental self-laceration, brought about by reflections on the hereafter. My musings were caused by the large screen situated up on the wall at the front of the room in a way that it could be seen by everyone from every angle. The screen loomed ominously on the few patients (and visitors) in the room like a version of Orwell’s Big Brother. The sound was off and subtitles ran across the bottom of it. But it was not the object that made me think of life and death, especially the latter, but the environment in which it operated, including the message conveyed by the images on the screen.



Forget about the absence of an apostrophe. Just be scared, be very scared!

I know that as we enter the cold season of the year (autumn is almost here, even if it has been
unusually warm for September. This will be followed, I’m sure, by a winter that might want to take revenge on us for last year’s mildness) we ought to think more of those who are at risk of falling prey to flu and other maladies. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for depressing waiting rooms in GP surgeries. On this occasion as I sat in the semi-empty waiting room with my daughter, I noticed that the walls, fronts desk, lift door, stairs and entrance were festooned with explicit posters and bunting about the anti-flu jab. They also carried a very detailed description of what symptoms to look out if one thought a cold was coming on. No wonder I began to sneeze.

Despite my overall good health (touch wood), I felt somewhat hypochondriac and paranoid in that room. Between the messages being beamed at me by the large screen and the flyers around me, I began to doubt my own well-being. Falls, respiratory complications, obesity, allergies, dementia, you name it; they covered all that in just under a quarter of an hour.

As I mentioned before, it goes without saying that a GP surgery is better placed than other outlets to raise awareness of a balanced and stress-free lifestyle and regular medical check-ups. But there are ways of doing it without overwhelming people who come in to see their doctor in circumstances which could be, to put it mildly, very delicate sometimes. As I walked back down the stairs with my daughter to return to the car park, I kept watching my step. Having been exposed half an hour before to images of what a nasty fall could cause, I didn’t fancy a trip to casualty with a broken ankle. It took me another day to recover from the GP experience. I wonder how much longer it would take someone with a more susceptible personality.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. A lot of good literature is being written in Cuba. Not just novels, but also poetry and short stories. I think it is my duty as someone born and raised in the Caribbean island and armed with a weapon to which many of these up-and-coming authors have no access – a blog - , to promote their work. No, this is not a sponsored feature and I’m not being commissioned by anyone. My only interest in finding a larger audience to the two books below is that they were both translated by an ex-postgraduate teacher I had back in uni when I was still an undergraduate student. Dick Cluster very kindly made an exception for me to join his lectures on crime fiction and for that I will always be grateful. He is also a writer in his own right of both fiction and non-fiction. Click on all the links provided to find out more.

A Corner of the World

Vital Signs



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Next Post: “Urban Dictionary”, to be published on Wednesday 1^st October at 11:59pm (GMT)