covid 2023

02 Tuesday May 2023

Posted by in coronavirus, covid, health, health & happiness, sevilla

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covid 2013

Hey guess what… it’s STILL FUCKING HERE.  Yesterday Peter tested positive for Covid (so far I’m still negative). His symptoms started on Sunday (feeling tired, chesty cough) so we did a test on Sunday evening – negative. But Monday morning there it was. Fuck. Obviously since the positive test result Peter has been keeping to his room, wearing a mask, with the balcony doors open for ventilation… and of course he cancelled his tours this week.

I also got in touch with my clients booked for this week. Told them the situation, that I had so far not tested positive (and of course would test on the morning of the tour) but they have opted to cancel. Fair enough. I wanted that to be their choice, it wasn’t mine to make for them, thinking I was fine, it was theirs to make based on the possibility that I might not be. Totally respect that.

And yeah, it sucks to lose work and income. But I don’t get it. How do people who KNOW they are Covid positive still keep going out and about, keep going to work, keep meeting friends for dinner, going on trips, etc etc fucking etc??? Then there are the people who are in denial, who refuse to test, refuse to acknowledge they may have Covid because… who the fuck even knows why? It makes no sense to me.

There is no such thing as “just a cold” in my house any more. Because there is no such thing as “just a cold” pretty much anywhere in the world any more. In fact, I haven’t had JUST A COLD since December 2019. Gee must’ve had something to do with everyone wearing masks, washing hands, paying attention… though I did finally succumb to Covid in October 2022, just two weeks before I was scheduled for the second booster (fuck fuck fuck). “Mild” symptoms, ten days testing positive, twelve days spent at home until I got two consecutive negative tests, so as not to infect other people. I don’t understand why this is a hard concept to take in, or why people think it’s somehow okay to infect others with a potentially fatal illness, or one that could result in life-long incapacity.

I do understand that we all can’t afford to take time off (god knows I can’t) and I fully acknowledge I take some personal risks that I probably shouldn’t but I have to work and, just like everyone, I want to have a bit of my old life back. Those are my personal choices that I make for myself. But for me to decide… hey, flatmate is down with Covid but so far I’m okay so I’m not going to tell anyone unless I have to… who the fuck even thinks like this? The mind reels. And the heart hurts.

casa azahar is 17!

01 Monday May 2023

Posted by in casa azahar, home, internet

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celebrate

It’s crazy… has it been 17 years already??? And this silly old blog is still going. I never would have thought way back then that it would carry on for so long, especially when at times it looked like I wouldn’t even be around to write it. Anyhow, here we are, and I appreciate every one of you, every day. And yes, I am hoping to stay a little bit – or even a lot – longer.

Thanks for sticking around (and welcome to any new visitors!).
I couldn’t be doing this without you.

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an inspiration (not an influencer)

28 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by in culture, Malaga, sevilla

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you really like me

My goodness, what a joy it was to see this on my Twitter time line. And I mean really… wow. It’s an article called Alegría (Joy) by Braulio Ortiz from the Diario de Sevilla, and it just took my breath away. Braulio mentions me and “German in Spain” Christian Machowski as the ones who inspired him to write this article. It’s in Spanish and I think is behind a paywall so I have done a quick translation of the bit that mentions me and Christian. It’s basically about how oftentimes it takes an “outsider” to help us remember who we are.

We must preserve that trait of ours, our joy. It is the people who cling to life, who smile, who captivate us

Often a gaze directed outwards helps us to remember who we are; it returns to us, like a mirror that we bump into unexpectedly on a walk, a reflection in which we no longer stopped. With the excitement of a reunion, of a revelation perhaps, I am following two Twitter accounts with interest: those of Shawn Hennessey, a Canadian living in Seville who organizes amazing gastronomic tours, and Christian Machowski, a German who after residing in the United Kingdom for almost a quarter of a century settled in Malaga. One better appreciates the culinary heritage in its surroundings by observing the amazing tapas shared by the first: the quality of the raw material, and the creativity with which the chefs approach it, make up a comforting landscape. Machowski, for his part, photographs a beautiful Malaga that still preserves its essence, its original charm, despite the voracity with which tourism transforms it. In the images of both, a hospitable, friendly land appears, a place that invites you to stay, a picture almost at the antipodes of that bitter vision of dirty and noisy cities through which we in the south sometimes contemplate ourselves.

How fabulous is that? It will never be less than an overwhelming experience when I find myself being recognised by Spanish people as being one of their own, or at least accepted as someone of recognition based on my love of Spain. So I shall bask in the glow of this for a while. When I thanked Braulio on Twitter I told him that I’d much prefer to be an inspiration than an influencer, and Christian said that he agreed. Thanks again Braulio!