A one-in-a-one-thousand-four-hundred-and-sixty-one

kind of a day began with me banking the cheque sent to me as an apology from my former bank for their incompetence in treating me as a human being. For twenty two months they have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that I am no longer using Spouseman's family name, but my own. They failed to notice when I transferred all the money I had in my accounts with them to another bank who had been happy to allow me to open accounts in my own name, and they failed to acknowledge my letter of complaint which they received five months ago including my bank cards cut up and my card-reader intact. Fucktards!

Next stop was the agent who has been managing the letting of my London flat since I moved to Greece fifteen years ago. The flat is occupied by my personal friends who are perfectly capable of looking after the place properly and paying the rent on time. I am no longer living abroad and therefore do not require an agent to organise anything on my behalf, so the agent and I are parting company. I went to collect their set of keys to the flat. When I left in February 2005 I probably handed over 3 pairs of keys. My current tenants probably have two pairs of keys, so I was expecting to pick up one, two or possibly three pairs of keys depending upon how many spares had been cut for various reasons over the last fifteen years. As it turned out I collected 17 keys (200g) several of which are for weird types of locks I have no clue about. Mysterious!

From there I walked to Canary Wharf, and had it not been for the weight of the keys in my bag the wind of Storm Jorge would have lifted me into the water. So Funny! British folk were expecting that the storm after Dennis would be called Ellen, but no! This one has been named by the Spanish who have already reached the letter J, and they received this storm before it reached Britain. So only one month since Britain left the EU and already we have lost control. I so hope that the second storm to reach Europe in 2021 is named BoJo, where in Greece it will be spelled BoZo.

I had agreed to meet my beautiful friend, Elektra, outside Guy's Hospital at 2pm. I arrived at London Bridge with about 45 minutes to spare, so took the opportunity to try once again to get inside Southwark Cathedral to visit the memorial to the victims of the Marchioness disaster. I have tried several times before but always there was a service of some kind taking place and I have been refused admission. This time, success. When that disaster took place in 1989 I was working only a few paces from where it had occurred and I was in the habit of spending my lunch break at the river bank, so naturally, for some days afterwards, I was watching police divers retrieving evidence and the bodies of the victims. It was sometime later that I learned that my school classmate, Julian, was one of those passengers drowned, and I have always wanted to visit the cathedral to say goodbye to him. Today that happened.
The engraved black marble laid flat upon the floor was difficult to photograph with the light of the nearby candles and also the bright sunlight from the windows above reflecting off it, but I tried. And I cried too. (Extra)

Then I checked the time on the phone in my pocket and found a message from Elektra to let me know that her lecture had finished early and she would be available in moments. I wiped my tears for Julian and set off through the crowds in Borough Food Market to meet up with my friend.

Elektra is a beautiful (tall) Greek woman from Thessaloniki who has played for the Greek National Basketball Team. We first met when my French neighbours in Greece had called out the local doctor from Glossa for a home visit, and despite the fact that the French neighbours and the Greek doctor were both speaking to each other in English, they were making no headway, so I was called to translate between English-spoken-with-a-French-accent and English-spoken-with-a-Greek-accent. Worked a treat!

That was my first encounter with the Greek health service, and I was so enlightened that soon after, I visited the local GP to discuss my own symptoms, and there began my journey into cancer diagnosis and full recovery therefrom. I have a lot to be grateful for; idiot neighbours introducing me to the Greek health service for one, and meeting Elektra as part of that.

She is now a fully qualified GP living and working in London but is stressed by the current “10-minutes-per-patient” NHS rule. Patients come to her complaining of “tiredness”, when she asks questions that dig a little deeper it becomes obvious that they are stressed, which causes depression, which causes fatigue, but you cannot dig that deep in a ten-minute appointment. Elektra is a doctor because she cares about her patients, so she prefers to take the time it takes to get to the root of their problem, not cut them off at ten minutes and prescribe drugs. Following that regime causes her stress, makes her depressed, causes her fatigue.

For six hours we talked and walked and talked and walked. We also hugged.
I hope that this image is only temporary, I hope that Elektra will sanction the use of the portrait I made for her.

When I got home, much later, there were another two astonishing pieces of news, neither of which I can share just yet, but what an all-round magical day!