The eyes have it

No, no, no... I was the one inside the wardrobe." The punchline to the joke was greeted with such raucous laughter from the passengers on the bus that I was almost tempted to ask the driver, Pepe, to repeat the whole thing after I'd climbed aboard.

No need for me to worry about missing out, though - he was on a roll and the gags kept coming thick and fast as we headed up into the mountains.

After a while, a middle-aged woman intervened.

"Your jokes are really funny, Pepe but, let's be honest, they're not as funny as some of the things that have actually happened in the villages up here."

At this point, the ten or twelve passengers on board offered each other conspiratorial smiles and nods of agreement.

And so it began: "Remember that time..." became the phrase du jour as everyone took turns to recount increasingly hilarious tales of day-to-day village life.

These were all unbelievably amusing nuggets of humour but the tale that made me laugh the most concerned something that had happened up here relatively recently.

María (I've changed her name), one of the oldest people living in her village was, therefore, one of the first to be vaccinated. At the appointed hour, she went to see Juan Manuel, the nurse, at the local health centre.

Having administered the vaccination, Juan Manuel gently warned her of the possibility of some unpleasant side effects next day; she was to call him immediately if she was worried about any unusual symptoms.

The following morning, as the young nurse opened the door to his office, the phone on his desk was already ringing. Somewhat anxiously, he picked it up.

"It's Maria here, I'm really worried, Juan Manuel. Ever since you gave me the vaccination, I haven't been able to see very well. Everything's really blurry. This is terrible. I'm panicking. I need to go to accident and emergency, don't I?"

"Relax, María, and - "

"No, no , there's no time, please call me an ambulance, I'm worried I might go blind. I must get to the hospital."

"María there's no need to go to the hospital. You only need to come here."

"But this is really serious, Juan Manuel. My vision is very, very blurred."

"No, I'm sorry, you don't understand, María. You only need to come here, because I've just noticed you left your glasses on my desk yesterday."

True story.