In week 13 of 2021, I got an email from the Arsenal Disabled Supporters Association. They are going to be using a photo of me in one of their huge banners around the Emirates Stadium.
Friday, March 26th.
My leg is a bit swollen today from the extra walking I have done over the last few days, I will have to rest my leg up. After finishing the current book I was reading, I binged watched some American television and flicked between channels so that I could keep an eye on the France v Scotland rugby match. I was pleased to see the Scottish team, beat the French in another very close game, to help the Welsh win the Six Nations competition. Late tonight and in the early hours of Saturday, I end up watching the film La La Land again before finally going to bed.
Saturday, March 27th.
I woke up early today despite going to bed very late. I received an email from the Arsenal Disabled Supporters Association today, they are having large banners hung at the training ground and ground showing images of different supporters. A photograph of me in my Arsenal shirt sat on the Great Wall of China is being included in the banner. If you ever watch the television from Arsenal, the banner I appear on has 'Always Together' written across images of Arsenal Fans. If you look at the first letter E in the word 'Together', that is me directly below it. If you don't watch football this is it here.
Arsenal Disabled Supporters Association banner.
I walked to my friend Mark's house to get a lift to a music event at a bar in Las Lomas this afternoon. After a bit of a magical mystery tour, we found the bar and took our seats which Mark had reserved for us and five other people. Unfortunately for us, there were simply not enough staff on duty and a lot of the staff that were there did not seem interested in serving people. After being there for over 2½ hours and having ordered on four separate occasions we still only had 2 drinks appear. Someone else joined us as we had a spare seat at the table, they could not get a drink either and decided to leave. I left the money for the drink I did get, with someone else at the table and went back for something to eat and drink at Pearls Plaice in Los Alcázares.
At Pearl's Plaice, I had a really good fish and chip dinner with a pint. The service and the food was brilliant and I will start to go here more often when I fancy fish and chips. After dinner, we moved to Rocco's bar to chat with my friend Matt for a few hours and arranged to go for a game of pitch and putt golf next Friday. I haven't played golf for about 3 years and was never very good so it should be fun. As we sat chatting lots of people started to turn up from the event I had been to earlier in the day, they all said the same thing. The entertainment was very good but the service was terrible, some of them were unable to even get a bill, had given up trying and had resorted to messaging the person who organised it to say they would have to pay him when they saw him next time. Luckily for me, as my leg was aching, my friend, Keith give me a lift home.
Unfortunately for me, this evening my leg went into a severe cramp which caused me to collapse on the floor in agony. After about 20 minutes I was able to get up and stretch my leg out on the cold marble floors in my apartment. This does seem to help but I will have to take it easy for a few days.
Sunday, March 28th.
I woke up this morning and felt better, my leg did cramp again a few times in the night but nowhere nearly as bad as it did yesterday evening. I spend the entire day binge-watching an American television series called Virgin River. I love watching this type of programme just because of the amazing scenery in them. I wonder how many of these types of television shows are produced just to promote different areas around the world. Virgin River was mostly filmed in Vancouver in Canada and it made me want to visit Vancouver to tour the amazing landscapes.
I also spent a bit of time looking for natural remedies for leg cramps. I know that the major thing that causes them are being dehydrated, problems with tendons and exercise. I drink an awful lot of water so it can't possibly be that I was dehydrated but the tendons in the leg that I get cramps in were badly damaged years ago and I think this fact and the extra walking I did last week and the diuretics that I had to take for a short time, have caused the cramp. I do read that ginger and chamomile tea is good for cramps so I will try to order some this week.
Monday, March 29th.
In the morning I look on Amazon and find some chamomile, mint, green citrus tea. I place an order which should arrive tomorrow. Around lunchtime, my friend Reindeer brings me some goat and lamb meat that he has bought for me. Later this week I will attempt to make a goat curry and a lamb stew or lamb curry. The rest of the day I spend resting my leg and doing some administration on my website and google accounts, deleting trash files and organising others so that I can find them easier.
Tuesday, March 30th.
Today I was up at crazy o'clock and couldn't get back to sleep, so I went surfing around on the internet, looking at digital art websites and training videos. My health must be returning closer to normal than it has been for a while, my get up and go, which had got up and gone, seems to slowly be returning.
At around 8:30 am I went to the bank to get some money, then hurried back to make sure I was in when my Amazon delivery arrived. Luckily for me, the order is delivered by Amazon at 10 am, which means I don't have to wait all day and can now go food shopping. Hopefully, this will help with the bad leg cramp I have been suffering from.
My friend George took me to San Javier to go shopping as I wanted to go to Campillo there. I buy enough meat to run a restaurant for a month then stop at Aldi in Los Alcázares for bread, fruit, vegetables and a few other items that I need before George then drops me off at home again. I unpack everything and have a pot of tea with two doughnuts that must have flung themselves into my shopping basket whilst I was picking out some bread rolls.
I had some bad news tonight, my friend Graham Moss from Fareham, died yesterday. I will always think fondly of him, he did a lot for me, when I was as fit as a fiddle, when I was ill, and when I became disabled. He was always a good friend to me and it is a shame that he never made it out to see me when I lived in Orlando, Florida, USA, or in Los Alcázares in Spain. Over the years I knew him, he would always help me out in any way he could. RIP Graham.
Wednesday, March 31st.
I slept well last night, until around 8:30 am, lazy sod. I realize early on that I forgot to get a few ingredients for my curry yesterday. Am I the only person who goes shopping, gets loads of stuff they didn't know they wanted and then gets home to find they forgot to get what they wanted in the first place?
I decide to try out the new Mercadona supermarket and I am impressed by the space, so many Spanish supermarkets are cramped confined spaces, this feels much nicer. The bakery smells lovely as I walk around looking at what the store stocks and what it doesn't. I buy myself one of their pizzas for lunch to see what they taste like, they look better than other supermarkets. After getting the few things I needed, I go straight home, I had intended to stop for a coffee at La Zona bar but I just can't get warm today. When I get home I cook the pizza and put a bit of extra cheese on it. It tasted lovely and was much nicer than any others I have tried from local supermarkets.
After dinner, I clean my clothes washing machine, pour the liquid in and put the washing machine on a 60° wash cycle. Hopefully, this will work and my clothes will come out even cleaner and smell better next time I do some washing. The rest of the day was spent working on my website before settling down in front of the television to watch the England v Poland World Cup Qualifying match tonight. England won the game but was not very good. They should win the group they are in and win every game but this would mean nothing as it is a very poor group.
Thursday, April 1st.
I slept well again last night and didn't wake until around 9 am. I am still a bit sleepy so I make a pot of chai tea to drink before I then prepare a goat curry that goes in my slow cooker to eat later in the day.
At lunchtime, I go to see my friends Frouk and Reindeer. to have some lunch and to drop off some money that I owe them for some shopping they got me. We spent a couple of hours chatting and had some fantastic spicy Mexican mince tacos that Reindeer made himself.
I really liked the colour of some of the plants in the planters in their garden and they told me that they bought them near my apartment so I can get some myself for my balcony. They also gave me some lemons from their lemon tree to take home, I think I will try to make some lemon curd, something that I loved as a young boy but hadn't had for many years.
When I got home I had to apologise to my friends straight away. The point of my visit was to give them the 20 euros I owed them and I had completely forgotten to give it to them. Luckily for me, they had forgotten as well and as they are driving past my apartment tomorrow they can pick it up, saving me a journey back out in the cold on my scooter.
Tonight I ate half of the goat curry with some pasta, it was fantastic and I had to stop myself from eating it all in one go. The leftovers will be my lunch tomorrow. After my curry I watched a photoshop video showing me how to produce some digital art. It was a piece of art that had the persons head split in half with another version of the persons head being shown beneath it, almost as if a second person was living under the original skin. It gave me some great ideas for my next digital art project and I will try to do it over the course of next week.