2/2 – A Trip To The Chemist
Liesl went back to bed today with a migraine, not brought on by the evening that we had last night as she was driving and drank only water all night – yes, honest!
She asked me to go to the chemist and get some migraine tablets – I agreed, what could I say, although I did start to panic, our Spanish is getting better, but I had no idea what the word for ‘migraine’ is in Spanish – I grabbed the dictionary and drove off to the chemist. When I arrived, I had already formulated in my head what I was going to say – it wasn’t going to be particularly good Spanish, but it would have to do – something like “Quiero pastilla para mi mujer por ….” the last bit being whatever the word for migraine was in Spanish.
As I walked in there were already 3 people in the queue which pleased me as it gave me the time to look up the work for migraine in the dictionary while I waited.
Jaqueca! How the hell am I going to pronounce that I thought to myself???
Everyone else in the queue in front of me had not bothered to attempt to speak in Spanish which was a big mistake as the girl behind the counter didn’t speak (or was not going to speak) English, this is quite unusual as most chemists do speak very good English. I was embarrassed when the couple in front of just said “eerm we want xxxxx, have you got any?” xxxxx being the product that they were asking for – the girl simply replied “¿qué?” in a very ‘Manuel from Faulty Towers’ kind of way – hehe!
The couple then repeated, slightly louder, adding “it’s herbal, for hyper-tension, xxxxx do you sell it?”
Why on earth they thought that the girl would understand them better if they shouted is anyone’s guess, but I suspect it’s a British thing? Either way the blank look on the girl certainly didn’t help with the hyper-tension problem and they decided to come back later – presumably when they had taken a little more effort with some Spanish words.
I guess I could have tried to help, but I was a little annoyed that they hadn’t bothered to look up any words and I was still trying, and failing, to pronounce Jaqueca to myself under my breath!
It was my turn, I reeled off my short sentence together with a poorly pronounced Jaqueca at the end, the girl understood exactly what I wanted and pointed to her head in acknowledgement.
She went into the back of the shop, collected a box of tablets and handed them to me, one Euro, fifty cent – not bad really!
I left and administered to Liesl – hopefully she will be well enough to go out to Pam and Dave’s house for dinner tonight – fingers crossed.
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