Category Archives: covid

well boo hoo and fuck you

27 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, friends, health & happiness, musings

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virus 3d illustration

Who me angry?? Whatever gave you that idea?  🙂

I had something happen today that puts my mind somewhat at rest. For now. It doesn’t actually keep reality at bay, but it’s a much needed stopgap. Some breathing space. And it might be my last chance so I hope I don’t fuck it up.

Meanwhile I had to cancel a work trip to Valencia this week. I’d been commissioned by Decanter to do another of my travel articles for them, but with Covid cases spiking like crazy the past couple of weeks, including lots of breakthrough cases, I decided to stay put. Sure, things probably aren’t much worse in Valencia than in Sevilla, but at least here I am mostly in my own home. Five days away would mean being out and about all day long, meeting with lots of different people, eating out for every meal, staying at hotels, not to mention five hours each way on a train. And well, just… no.

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you lose some, you win some

05 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, gastronomy, instagram, patreon, sevilla, tapas, tapas bars, tapas tours

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lose some win some beautiful food and wonderful service at La Atrayana

I think most of you know about my labour of love Sevilla Tapas, that I started back in 2007, which then evolved into me doing food and wine tours after recovering from cancer. Which was going great until, well you know, 2020. But the main point of the website is to feature and help promote tapas bars and restaurants in Sevilla, and also to serve as a guide for food-loving people visiting the city.

During lockdown I did my best to support tapas bars here by keeping them in the public eye on my Twitter and Instagram accounts. As I have something like 30,000 food pics in my phone archives this wasn’t a problem. So I’d be sure to post something daily. Then once places started reopening I got back to doing what I do, which is visiting bars and updating their pages on my site. Very sadly some had closed for good during 2020, but others were born. And so keeping within my “safety parameters” of only going out twice a week and either sitting outside or near an open door/window, I got back to work.

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fully vaxxed!

28 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, sevilla

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vaxxed

This is me… fully vaxxed! Had my second jab of Astrazeneca today (so far so good). There was a bit of a mix up with the dates. I had thought it was scheduled for July 1st, and indeed said as much on a post here. But the other day I checked my calendar and I had it down for today, June 28th. So I thought best to go down to my health centre today just in case as I didn’t want to miss my appointment. Sure enough, I wasn’t on today’s list, but they let me in anyhow, since I was already there. It’s actually better timing this way as two weeks tomorrow I have my first tapas tour in over 16 months (!!!) and this way I’ll feel safer doing it.

And so now I am back at home waiting to see if I get any icky side effects. Hope not!

masks off!

25 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, sevilla, spain, welcome

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no masks

So first of all… that’s a misleading title, like many of the headlines I’ve been reading this week about Spain returning to “life without masks”. What IS true is that from Saturday June 26th people are no longer required to wear masks outdoors IF they can maintain a distance of 1.5 metres between people not from their household. Which, as you can see from that photo, is not actually possible in city streets. Heck, some streets in Sevilla are barely 3 metres wide. The other thing the media has been neglecting to point out is that we are still required to carry a mask with us at all times or risk a 100 euro fine if caught without one.

Meanwhile, in spite of the central government’s decision, the regional government in Andalucía is asking us to keep wearing masks everywhere due to our continued increase of infections (we have the highest Covid rate in the country and the EU Council has placed us in their “high risk” level). Given that the Delta/India variant is highly contagious, I am really hoping people will be sensible (fingers crossed). Because this pandemic is far from over.