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I took a trip to Santander
(North
coast Spain) to visit my friends in 1998.
They were teaching English as an
excuse for surfing. I was a learner and used to naively
paddle out into the big surf after
them and just get mullered.
One evening the waves were milder
and I thought "Right this is it". I was pushing the board out
through knee deep water when it felt like I'd stepped on a fishhook.
I carried on out but the
pain started up my leg. I had no
idea what had got me and hobbled back to the beach Cafe for advice
or an antidote but it was closed. My mind panicked and the pain was
intensifying so I hopped (literally) 200 yds over to the otherside
of the bay where my friends were way out to sea.
Dusk was falling.
I screamed and waved madly at them
for some time eventually catching their attention.
The Spanish local among them
muttered "Scorpion fish", stuck me in the back of his van
and drove at speed to the local
hospital. By this stage the pain was frighteningly beserk.
At the hospital they stuck me in a
wheelchair still in my wetsuit and pushed me into a curtained room.
I swear they were giggling at me behind the cloth. Eventually a
nurse appeared and produced a needle the size of which produced a
reflex "NO" from me understandable in any language.
I knew where that was about to go.
So second choice was a brown horse
pill but it did the trick.
There was still a residual niggling
pain in my toe about a month later when a letter with a Spanish
postmark plopped on the mat. The girls from the bar? My mates had
learnt to write? No. A bill for a for about a 100 notes from
Santander hospital.
Did I pay it? Did I f**k.
BTW they like sandy shallows so you
should scuff along as you walk. Apparently. Sent in by Charlie |
