Returning to a post-Crucible life in Buenos Aires

Street Doctor Ricardo, Acassuso, January 2025

So, The Crucible has finished, so its time to get back to normal life in Buenos Aires. When in doubt, walk.

 For some reason, I wake up a lot earlier these days. For some other reason, I am trying to get on a health kick, which involves controlling my eating, pretending that I don’t have an alcohol problem, and that alcohol is actually a zero calories product; and exercise. Until 13 years ago I would run 10 kms a day, at least 5 times a week. Now, I walk. Basically, I have become the Chariots of Fire version of Forrest Gump.

So, I walk at least 7 kms a day, and what a privilege it is. I am fortunate to live in the suburb of Acassuso, which whilst only 15 kms from the Obelisk, the symbolic centre of Buenos Aires, ( to be politically correct the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, but who can be bothered to say all that?), is situated in the Province of Buenos Aires, a province geographically larger than the UK, France and Spain put together.

Acassuso is full of leafy streets, coffee houses and a fair number of decent restaurants, although a bit weak on good bars, to be fair. At 8 o’clock on a Saturday in January, walking is a luxury, and the lack of bars is irrelevant. Think Paris in August, great weather, empty streets, no Frenchmen (Ok, no Argentinians), and best of all, no car horns.

The streets of Acassuso, January 2025

My day began in this oasis of peace, and then an epiphany. As I walk in my own little mental bubble, a street cleaner, dressed in his neatl Municipality of San Isidro polo shirt and shorts, said ‘Buen día Señor’. I stopped, smiled and …choked..and here I digress.

Over the past month or so I have been suffering with health problems linked at first to a cough, and then to breathing problems, which means sometimes I cough, and I can’t breathe, and at night I wake up and can’t breathe. Now I appreciate irony probably more than most, but I’ve never smoked in my life, and red wine surely cannot be blamed for this. So, of course, I have undergone all the medical tests, and the doctors have been great. I am now on a puff thingy full of weird drugs which would probably get me banned from the Olympics (except in cycling of course), but nobody has pinpointed precisely what the problem is.

Until the epiphany. I choked and then went through the process of rebooting my breathing hard drive, and finally said ‘Sorry about that, good morning!’ The street cleaner, who we shall call Ricardo, for Ricardo is indeed his name, I know because I asked him and he told me that it was indeed so, said:

 ‘No problem. I live with this. It’s the resin, the leaves, the berries and the dust from the trees. At this time of year, this plus the dry heat and breeze, always brings this on’.

So, we talked about it a bit more, shook hands, and I walked away with one worry less, albeit admittedly a minor one in my current plethora of existential owes. All thanks to Ricardo, the San Isidro Street Cleaner. Or Doctor Ricky to his newly acquired friends……