Day 86 - "Inconvenient Death"

Today a story of a TV set and an inconvenient death, and speaking of inconvenience, how dare you ask to transfer money at a Spanish bank without an appointment.

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Day 86 Inconvenient Death uncorrected transcript

 

Tuesday and the wind has dropped for the moment so we spent a jolly hour or so cleaning up the mess.  We have learned to take a completely different approach to cleaning here.

 

In the UK washing down, spraying paths with the garden hose and brushing with a broom was our normal procedure for a tidy up.  Here it starts with a broom and dustpan and brush, the secret is to keep everything as dry as possible.  Most of the dirt here is like sand, fine and if you wash a terrace down it turns into a brown slurry, the best thing is to remove as much as possible.

 

After a broom and dustpan, we have a vacuum cleaner that is now used for outside, it is a fairly knackered Dyson held together by Sellotape, but it does a good job of sucking up the remaining dust from outside.

 

Only then do we go in with a mop and bucket, or a Karcher. It can be a miserable job to do as the wind might return tomorrow and blow more mess around.  I am convinced it is why the Spanish have a fondness for the colour Brown, it hides all that dust, oh and the terracotta Andalucian tiles never show the mess either.

 

Tuesday and we very sadly hear of a death in our old village, a 52 year old man who had been dead for some ten days, it was his sister who discovered him according to the Seaside Gazette.

 

A few years ago when we were in the village there was a similar sad occurrence.  The husband of a couple who had bought one of the flats in the complex where we were living had decided to come out and buy a new TV set for the apartment.

 

It would seem he and his wife were not getting on particularly well, so it was also a little break from each other.  Our friends Jen and Dave met him in the street a few times, he seemed nice enough if a little distant.

 

The couple had the flat in the same block as Jen and Dave in fact the apartment was above theirs.

 

For some reason, I can’t remember why, I had to go and visit Jen, to collect a key or something. As I arrived at their block, I couldn’t help noticing the drains were smelling particularly bad that day.

 

 I mentioned it to Dave, he said “I wonder where it is coming from?” We noticed the window open in the flat above theirs, and it seemed to be coming from there.

 

Dave said to me “I haven’t seen that bloke for a few days?” I said “You told me he seemed to be a bit down.”

 

“I know I will get the ladder and climb up and have a look, we tried knocking this morning and nobody answered.”

 

Later that afternoon he told me he climbed up to the window.  “The smell was terrible, he said and he peered into to see a swarm of flies around something purple, then he realised it was a human arm, nearly falling off the building he called the ambulance and police.

 

They arrived and broke the door down to discover the poor man had slashed his wrists, covered the whole flat in blood and died.  Dave said he seemed to have deliberately sprayed the walls up and down with his blood.

 

Some other locals had seen him staggering around drunk a couple of days before.  The Pharmacy said that he had come in and shown them a UK prescription for Valium which they agreed to dispense for him.  Later the pathology report showed that he had taken the lot.

 

The Police called his wife, “Oh my God she said, did he get any blood on the new TV?”  The policeman said “No”. “Thank god for that,” she said.

They asked her if she would fly over to identify the body.  She told them “Fly over now, do you know how much short notice flights, cost, I will let you know when I can find a cheaper flight.”

 

In the end it was over a week before his wife found a flight cheap enough to take and come and identify his body. Jen and Dave in the meantime asked her what she wanted to do with the flat, she asked them to clean it up as she would be staying there when she came over.

 

Dave explained that there was a great deal of blood up the walls and on the floor the forensic team had left quite a mess, so he didn’t think they could do it but suggested that he contact a professional cleaning company. 

 

He called a company that came in after scene of crimes to clear up and they quoted three thousand Euros to remove all the blood and evidence that someone had died in the flat.

 

The wife flatly refused to pay that amount, so Dave managed to negotiate a deal for two thousand Euro, which she reluctantly agreed to pay.  So, what a sad and tragic end to a life and an astonishing reaction from his wife to boot.

 

 To be fair none of us no the back story of this guy, but I would hope that my nearest and dearest would care about me more than a new TV set.

 

Carmen is buying our car; she went to the bank to transfer the money.  “It is not possible,” what do you mean it is not possible, she said, you’re a bank, that’s what you do.  “only by appointment,” since when she asked, “since yesterday.”

 

The Banks here are mostly annoyed by the inconvenience of having to have customers, some only allow you to pay bills on certain days and times of the week, they all used to shut at 3pm, just like the banks did in the UK in the 1970s, but some are now changing.

 

It does seem a little odd that we are in the middle of Spain’s most serious financial crisis in modern history, following a pandemic that is not over yet and the Banks still cling on to their belligerent, obfuscated way of behaviour.