Showing posts with label phobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phobia. Show all posts

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Chasing paper 2





I am a bureauphobe, a papyrophobe, I am macrophobic, I am frightened of the wait before a rubber stamp thumps a form, even strip lighting in civic offices gives me the heebie-geebies. And yet all I wanted was to go swimming at the new local pool, an innocuous ambition with the goal of putting some shape to the amorphous silhouette that had begun to greet me each morning in the bathroom mirror.



Here it is necessary to get a piece of paper to get a rubber stamp to procure a form to make an application to make a declaration that you require to lodge a petition to get a piece of paper. Trees all over the world shudder at the sound of the Greek language and if you are worried about the greenhouse effect stop hounding Jeremy Clarkson and his cronies, you only have to look to the Greek civil service. The whole world could go to Tescos in Hummers and it would not touch the damage they do every day. Not only is it the obscene consumption of the rainforests but the petrol that is burned collecting and recollecting reams of stamped paper at offices dotted all over the city to find that one has been incorrectly stamped or that that law has is the meantime been changed to include the requirement of 10 years back-tax declarations from your great-grandparents or an autograph from Elvis.
Thank-you very much!


The nice young lady at the pool gave me a booklet and a list informing me that I would be required to obtain a certificate from my doctor and a dermatologist. I didn't have a GP, another phobia, so I had to go to the national insurance offices to have one signed up. The new GP informed me that she required a cardiology check-up and some blood tests, back to the insurance office to sign up a cardiologist.

Well now I'm sitting here with the faint smell of chlorine and a satisfying pertness in my muscles, all my tests were good and I've forgotten most of the road that got me here. Greece has become an a addiction, just as the obese head I carry in the morning doesn't stop me having a couple of glasses of wine at the end of the day, coughing hasn't stopped me smoking and I'm still married. Masochistic tendencies, maybe but at least I get to do it to me before they do.
   

From Under Dark Clouds

The Century of DIY