Author Archives: azahar

what a weekend

26 Monday Oct 2026

Posted by in sevilla, hospitals, hope, health

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

I don’t often get the chance to say that but omg this past weekend was nothing but wild, and not especially in a good way. Okay, mostly not in a good way. Let’s start at the beginning, when on Friday I slipped after mopping up after the electrician and landed BLAM on the wet marble hallway floor. Not good. I knew at the time I would be getting serious grief from my left hip and KNEES the next day and sure enough… I did. The hip pain was so bad that I ended up getting a taxi over to Urgencias, just for a (hopefully) quick Xray to check that nothing was broken. And phew! Nothing was. That left me enough time to taxi back to the centre and meet up with Ana, Simon & Sara who were here for a quick overnight visit. And it was fabulous.

Then came Sunday morning. The plan had been to meet another lovely friend, UK beer maven Melissa on the last day of her weekend birthday trip to Sevilla. They had also done this last year and loved it so much they wanted to do it again. It was all planned, we would meet them at Vineria San Telmo. Except… and the squeamish of you can turn away now… I woke up to find that MY POO WAS RED. Okay, not a bright fire engine red, more of a deep burgundy red wine colour. This was more than a somewhat alarming, especially as I’ve been waiting for another colonoscopy since mid-September after an earlier similar experience. So damn… what to do?

I was half tempted to just let it go for another day or two and see how things, um, developed colour-wise. But then I foolishly looked up “blood in stools after a fall” and, predictably, read all kinds of scary shit (sorry). So what the hell. The quick in-and-out experience of the previous day’s Going To Emergency experience gave me a deluded sense of optimism that it could happen again. Well, it didn’t. In fact, it didn’t happen big time.

(warning! it’s a long one)

Continue reading →

well ffs

23 Friday Oct 2026

Posted by in sevilla, casa azahar, health

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

It’s Friday afternoon and there I was making a batch of arancini (really the only reason I make risotto in the first place) and after ALL the tedious prep of forming the rice balls with a chunk of cheese inside, then rolling in bread crumbs, then dipping in beaten eggs before breading a second time in panko… I took a break. When I went back to fry them in olive oil (first stage, I then finish them off in the air fryer) suddenly my fuse box blew. Like fuck. No power.

So I had a look at the fuse box and tried to flip the switches back on (that usually works!) except this time it didn’t. The only way to have partial power was to leave the “circuito de fuerza” off, which was a bit worrying. Also, this meant that while power was restored to most of the apartment the fridge was still dead and there was also nothing in my bedroom. And so I called the landlord. And miracle! Within an hour someone from their insurance company was here, lovely electrician named Carlos, and he set about testing all the connections and appliances. The culprit turned out to be the hot water heater in the kitchen, which had just been replaced in 2021. Anyhow, Carlos called the landlord, explained the sitch, and now I’m waiting to see when I will have hot water again. Why do these things ALWAYS happen on a Friday afternoon???

Meanwhile, I was mopping up after Carlos left (workmen, shoes, you know…) and I slipped on a patch of wet floor and BANG I was down. And very painfully down, it took me ages to get up again because of KNEES and slipper floor… omg, it was pretty awful, not to mention scary. And now I have big time lower back and hip pain that is also scaring me. And I still don’t know when I’ll have hot water again. How’s your day going?