Category Archives: hope

knee news

18 Monday Aug 2025

Posted by in health, hope, hospitals, knee saga, knees, sevilla

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I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT TO SEE THE KNEE SPECIALIST. The call came in this morning and I almost couldn’t believe it. It’s for next week, August 28th and while I know I should be happy I’m also nervous, because of course this is just to find out if my surgery will be approved. I’ve already printed out my page outlining everything that has happened (and not happened) since May 2023 when this whole knee saga began. Hopefully it won’t be glossed over and dismissed like it was by the trauma guys last October.

To wit my friend Sharon has offered to come with me and be my advocate. Thing is, I’d be an excellent advocate for someone else, I just can’t manage it for myself when I’ve got all the other scary feelings going on. What can I say, hospitals trigger me big time. Anyhow… stay tuned. If it ends up being a simple meniscus repair I could be up and walking again in no time. A replacement would obviously be a longer recovery. And of course in either case I’ll end up going on another waiting list. But first things first.

relatively speaking…

19 Monday May 2025

Posted by in casa azahar, health, hope, hospitals, knee saga, knees, sevilla, spain

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Okay, so maybe not the best image since I AM GOING BALD and would never tear my hair out on purpose… but I mean fuck. No wonder it’s falling out on its own. Remember when I had it all worked out to finally take care of business and find out – in person – why I have been waiting SEVEN MONTHS to see the knee surgeon? And so on my way to my mammogram on Friday, at a new place way out in the middle of nowhere (sorry El Juncal, but you kind of are), I got off the bus and stopped in at the scene of the crime – Fleming Clinic – which was sorta kinda of on the way.

I was directed to the department I should be taking this up, and so that’s what I did. But after a few minutes of looking stuff up on the computer screen the woman at the desk told me… “all I can say is that the appointments being seen to now in the department are from requests made LAST JULY”.

My request was made in October.

And when the woman saw the look on my face she said… “well you know, relatively speaking, it shouldn’t be that far off now”.

I didn’t even know what to say. I asked if this meant I would have to wait another three months and she said “not necessarily”, which could mean anything. Maybe not three months, maybe longer. Remember, this is just to see the surgeon. Who will have to sign off on the surgery. And then I will go on ANOTHER WAITING LIST. Unless the surgeon doesn’t sign off on it and then I am completely fucked. So far I have been finding it very difficult to have doctors take me seriously about this and so it’s hard to hope.

feeling okay now…

16 Wednesday Apr 2025

Posted by in friends, health & happiness, hope, sevilla, tapas bars

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​I started off the day more or less okay, though with less sleep than I’d hoped for, and also waking up with a black cloud of “let’s beat up Shawn” hanging over me for not being all I’d hoped to be over the past few days. Without going into details, just a lot of the usual letting myself down stuff and deciding I’m a shit person for always letting myself down… ufff… it was hard to get up.

But I got up! Because Morcilla was looking a bit perkier and I had to prepare her special breakfast of Hill’s ID Prescription Diet, and also dole out a bit for Luna (or I’d never hear the end of it). So a spoonful of this apparently delicious paté for Luna on top of her bics and a fresh bowl of it for Morcilla. Both cats happy.

Then I got on the ol’ laptop, coffee in hand, and started on the usual online stuff. At some point I thought to tell my downstairs neighbour that Morcilla was feeling better and… well fuck me. I got back a pleasant response re: Morcilla but then it was like getting stuck in a time warp of weird.

My neighbour is 80-something as far as I know. She has no family to speak of, so she’s mostly on her own. After I first moved in – summer 2017 – we met up for lunch at a local bar and everything seemed fine. But then things went weird and suddenly I was being accused of being a BAD PERSON and all kinds of other WTF nastiness… all of this happening when I happened to pass her in the entrance. She would literally scream this in my face. And so I backed away…

Over the years there have been goodish and bad times with the neighbour. By goodish I mean she would sometimes stop screaming at me whenever we happened to cross paths. It seems my major crime is that I am not being a Good Neighbour, in that I don’t invite her up for coffee and a chat, that we aren’t always in contact, that (her words) SHE FEELS MORE ALONE WITH ME AS A NEIGHBOUR THAN IF I WASN’T THERE AT ALL.

I mean, fuck. We are in touch on WhatsApp, I am there for her if she actually needs anything, she knows she can call. For example, when she was recently very sick with “a cold” she asked if I had a Covid test at home and could I show her how to use it. So of course I popped down with the test, got it done, it was negative. No problem. But today I was apparently someone who would be better if they didn’t exist. Her words.

Now I know these are the words of a cranky old woman who lives a alone and is in a lot of daily chronic pain and so of course I shouldn’t take this personally. Except I do because they mirror the words I use against myself ALL THE TIME. Without realising it (I think?) she is reinforcing every awful thing I ever think about myself and I end up with that hard knot of anxiety in my belly because of course I’m awful otherwise why else would people keep saying so?

Then I went out with flatmate Peter to have a cold beer and a couple of tapas… just to get out of the house today before the Semana Santa crowds took over. Stopped in at Taberna Zurbarán and – oops! – like many bars during Semana Santa they had removed all chairs and bar stools because of the crowds. 

But when they saw me with my crutches at the end of the bar one of the guys magicked a bar stool for me, saying “don’t tell anybody!” and then other bar staff – totally run off their feet – stopped in their tracks when they saw me and it was all “Hey Shawn, so great to see you!” and then the owner of the bar came over with a tapa on the house (that gorgeous tortilla up there), just because. And then suddenly I felt like, hey I can’t be such a horrible person, otherwise all of these lovely people wouldn’t be so lovely to me. And just like that… my day changed.

People get this notion of me being something I’m not, or rather, they take one part of what they perceive to be me and then blow it all out of proportion to suit their opinion. As if I am only just one thing. But one thing I have learned over the years is that if anyone tells me I “intimidate” them (and this happens a lot!) I basically head for the hills because I already know they’re not seeing me as me and nothing good can come from that bullshit.

BUT… today some lovely people at one of my favourite tapas bars made me feel welcome and special, simply because we know that we just like and appreciate each other. Nothing other than that. Because nothing else matters.

five years of covid

14 Friday Mar 2025

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, health, hope

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It’s still so vivid for me. I’d just come home from a Decanter research trip to the Axarquía visiting Bodegas Dimobe, Viñedos Verticales and Bentomiz (where I spent the night) and the next day after lunch I went to Capuchinas Viejas. After which Susana drove me to the Santa Ana train station just outside Antequera and I got home about 9 pm on March 12th, 2020.

Of course I’d already been hearing “rumours” about the schools closing here because of what had been happening in Italy, then shops and restaurants were also mentioned, so the next day I popped over to Casa Morales to ask my family what was going on. And they had no idea. This was Friday. And then on Saturday March 14th everything shut down. Bang. Just like that. And life changed forever.

It started off being a bit surreal and we somehow had the notion that this would all be over in a few weeks, so people hunkered down and stayed home. Now in Spain we had a more rigid lockdown than most other countries. We were only allowed out of our homes (one person at a time) to go either to the supermarket or the pharmacy. And if you had a dog you were allowed 20 minutes but had to stay close to home. Otherwise we stayed home. For close to two months. During that time a few more shops and services were deemed “essential” and we all started wearing masks.

This was also when some bars and restaurants (I think my friends at La Azotea were the first) began offering take-away and delivery options.

I took to doing daily walks on my rooftop, with my music plugged in, going round and round like a hamster in a wheel, just to get a bit of fresh air, sunshine and exercise. I was lucky because it was just me and my downstairs neighbour Encarni (Peter was living elsewhere at the time, thank god) so it was allowed. It was prohibited to socialise on rooftops if you lived in a multi-dwelling building.

Then we were allowed to go out for walks, but without straying more than one kilometer from our homes. And you had to wear a mask. Walking times were assigned by age. By now it was May and already getting hot so elderly people were given the early morning cooler times, then other age groups at different times. Shortly after that bars and restaurants were allowed to open but only at 30% capacity. Memory is a bit fuzzy about this, but I think by mid-June most bars and restaurants were operating almost normally, especially if they had a terraza. Though vaccines were still many months away and it would be a year before everyone had their two required shots.

Of course much has changed since then, but sometimes I am almost nostalgic for those lockdown days. Obviously not for the death, fear and uncertainty because those were terrible dark times for many of us. But for a while it was almost like we all cared about each other and there was a glimmer of hope that we would come out of this crisis stronger and with a renewed sense of community and social responsibility. Instead… well, you can see for yourselves what’s happening. But dammit we were so close, or so I like to think. We missed our moment to shine. Fuck.

Oh, and COVID is not over. But you already knew that, right?