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Rutland columnist Allan Grey is adopted for a day




It’s a year on from my last visit to our home from home here in Playa Blanca with the Lovely Lady, a very difficult year, but a year when our family and our many friends have given me unerring love and support, writes Rutland columnist Allan Grey.

There have been friends that have called me, friends that have fed me - albeit now sadly with a steadily declining stream of carrot cake - friends that have walked with me, friends that have lunched with me, but until last week no friends that had actually adopted me, but now two have, and what a difference that made.

Flamingo Beach at Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. Photo: Allan Grey
Flamingo Beach at Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. Photo: Allan Grey

Last week I was adopted as brother and brother-in-law by friends with whom I travelled to Lanzarote. I became Louise’s brother and Michael’s brother-in-law, but just for one day I hasten to add.

I should explain, Louise was being provided with assistance through the airport by the wonderful Jet2 airline, as the Lovely Lady had been the previous year. She and husband Michael would need some help carrying their cabin baggage, something I was only too happy to help with, but only on the condition that they adopted me. So after a short ceremony, actually just the sharing of a pre-boarding cup of coffee and a bacon baguette at East Midlands Airport, I became one of the family.

From there it was all pretty plain sailing, Michael pushing Louise in a wheelchair out to the Ambulift, and me tagging along behind with a couple of their bags plus my own. Onto the plane and after a beautifully smooth four hour flight, a short wait for the Ambulift at Arrecife airport to off-load us. Along with our family threesome, there were four other couples, each with one of them in a wheelchair, each being collected by a member of the airport assistance team and quite amazingly, all of us immediately being transferred briskly past a massive three hour queue, getting us straight through the exhausting post-Brexit immigration system within minutes, what an incredible stroke of good fortune that was, completely unexpected!

Allan Grey
Allan Grey

The new system is seemingly reserved just for us rebellious Brits, with our passports now requiring to be stamped manually rather than being waved through as we were in the good old days. In the future the EU are introducing a new entry and exit system (EES) and our passports will just be scanned at a long line of new automatic gates, but they are not yet fully operational and so the current manual inspection slows the passport control process to a crawl, but happily not for those requiring assistance and their family, even the adopted members.

For the next few days at the beautiful Las Brisas resort, it was sympathies, condolences and commiserations from the many friends we met each year, each of them now also fully aware of the carrot cake tradition but a tradition I am intent on morphing into a rather less calorific gin and tonic tradition at the daily evening Happy Hour, just for the next three weeks you understand. I am then happy to return to carrot cake once back in Rutland.

Before I left for Lanzarote, I was grafting away in my study. Yes, I know, as an OAP, why am I still working so hard? I’m often trying to work that out myself, problem is that when I’m asked politely to get involved with something, I can never say no, maybe I need some relaxation or downright refusal therapy. It was 11am and my mobile phone pinged, it’s Oakham Medical Practice inviting me to book an appointment for my annual long term condition review, something as a stroke survivor I’m very happy to do. I’m invited to ‘click the link below’ to access the booking system, which I do, only to find just two appointments available, one at 11.15am, one at 11.30am, not next month or even next week, but the very same day. Did they know I would be immediately available and was still able to run down the road to the surgery, who knows? If I’d spent the time booking the 11.15am appointment, I’d never have made it in time, so I booked the 11.30am and legged it down there as quickly as I could.

Ten minutes later I’m in with a lovely new practice nurse and blood is carefully extracted from my arm. “Can you make sure they test my PSA as well please?”, I ask. “Of course” the nurse replies; I do like to have my prostate cancer risk checked every year alongside all the other checks that are made. As a digitally savvy OAP I ask: “When will the results be available on my NHS app?” “Within a few days”, the nurse replies and I leave, happy that the practice is looking after me.

Impatient as usual, I log into my NHS app early the following day, and lo and behold, there they are, a whole raft of results, all fortunately indicating ‘no further action’, and happily a PSA that has barely moved for the last 10 years. I can only commend the digital system based on that experience, but of course, not all of us OAPs are digitally included, many are digitally excluded, not just from their GP practice, but from other facilities as well, such as online banking now that so many branches have, or are closing. I feel great sympathy for them, so much of our life these days is digital, and I suspect before long the one day adoption process will be as well.



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