Unwelcome Visitor’s !

My favourite place in our apartment is the balcony where I am protected from the outside elements by the large glazed windows and the two double ‘French Style’ glazed doors. I spend many hours in here, no matter the season or time of the day, although at night in these Winter months it can get a little too chilly without any heating, although I do occasionally make use of a small portable fan heater. Once any of the routine domestic chores have been done, more usually the weekly cleaning regime or, like on one morning recently, fitting a new lock and handle mechanism on the kitchen door or, after we have returned from one of our walks or shopping trips, this is where I retreat to, for this is my ‘Haven of Peace’. We often eat our lunch in this space, although if it is a bit chilly Shazza will eat her’s in the living room where it is much warmer, but the cooler balcony doesn’t tend to bother me so much. I can spend hours in here, doing stuff on my iPad, or reading whatever book I have on the go on my Kindle or, much more usually, just sitting gazing out of the window, often in my own little world where I sit and contemplate things, which can be about anything and everything. The important thing is that this to me is a place where, whatever is going on in the wider outside world, it doesn’t encroach into here, other than in my thoughts that is. I have been spending a lot of time sat in my happy place recently, due to the adverse weather conditions we have been experiencing in our small corner of the world, although, reading the media headlines from around the world I am very aware that we were not the only one’s suffering an unusually prolonged period of very wet and stormy weather.

As I sit watching the fast flowing raindrops cascading down the windows, and listening to the gale force wind whistling relentlessly outside, sometimes not even being able to look out upon the sea as the rainfall is so heavy that it creates a curtain of thick grey mist. At one stage my thoughts drifted to when we were living in a house back in England on days such as these, we would have awoken, listened to the wind and rain outside and, although being in a nice warm centrally heated home, we would have probably still have scrunched up our shoulders and rubbed the palms of our hands together as we gazed out upon the wet and wintry scene before us, “Oh well, just another couple of months to go and Spring will arrive, with hopefully, a bit milder temperature” I would most likely have said, for I do tend to make such profound positive statements like that from time to time. The difference about living in England though, was that this type of wintery weather would have been quite normal, and it would almost certainly have been accompanied with frost, ice and snow but there would be nothing unusual about any of that. Even so, and I chuckled to myself as I thought about it, even though we were used to living through such Winter weather, year in, year out, without fail, we would still have moaned about it, for it’s a British national pastime, this moaning and groaning lark, it’s a compulsory subject in our education system don’t you know 😂 Some, more privileged members of British Society, even go on to University to get a degree in the art, and that art, of moaning and groaning, is not just confined to the subject of the weather either. Now let us also be honest, for the Brits are not alone in having specific traditional national behaviours, other countries around the globe also have their own specific education priorities too, and equally mandatory subjects that must be taught, learned and practiced for their regular use in daily life, of course these specialised arts vary, from country to country, for example, some teach their citizens how to queue jump, without feeling any guilt or embarrassment, I mean they have very busy lives, unlike everyone else, so they do not have time to stand in a line waiting for something. With other’s it is the art of never saying Please, or Thank You, probably the most globally recognised one though is the art of ensuring that one’s towel gets on to a sun bed before anyone else’s 😂 I find these human behaviours to be really amusing to watch and they can be easily turned into a game to pass some time, a bit like when travelling on a long journey in a car, bus or train and you have to count the number of certain coloured cars on the road, or horses in a field, but this particular ‘traits game’ is called ‘Guess The Nationality’, it can be especially fun whilst doing a spot of ‘People Watching’ in busy tourist locations 🤭 However, this game is not as easy as it once was, perhaps a reflection on the state of our world today, for now it seems that a lot of these once specific Nationality traits, are now becoming more common and widespread in their use throughout many different Nationalities 🤔

Over the last couple of months, since the beginning of December last year, we have been pestered by the presence of numerous ‘Unwelcome Visitor’s’, they arrive, without being invited, and each one, without fail, overstays their welcome 😲 I will publicly name and shame them here and now, although they already know who they are, Alice, Frances, Ingrid, Harry, Joseph and now Kristin. Okay yes, you have probably already guessed that these particular ‘Unwelcome Visitor’s’ are all major storms, which have followed swiftly on the coat tails of each other providing little, or no, respite from the trail of devastation that each one of them had created, although it has to be said that these trails of devastation have varied dramatically, dependent of course on which areas they had hit the worst, fortunately, in our small corner of the Costa del Sol, we have certainly been spared from any of the more ‘serious’ devastation, only really suffering from the inconvenience of not being able to get out as much for our regular walks. However, and yes, somewhat surprisingly for our area, even the snow had stretched its long white arms down to within 15km (9 miles) of Estepona, and that, I do have to say, is just a little too close for comfort for my liking ! Strange when I think about it now, but this time last year we were actually praying for ‘some’ rain, in order to end the previous two year’s of severe drought but now, we are frantically praying for it all to just stop, I guess we are just never happy eh ! 😂

Anyway, enough about the weather, because we cannot do anything about it 🤷‍♂️ although I afford myself a bit of a chuckle when an amusing thought suddenly enters my head, for without a doubt it will not be too long and then Shazza and I will both be moaning and groaning again, about it being too hot, the crowds of tourists and of course those bloody mosquito’s 😂

Personally speaking, the one biggest casualty of all of these storms was the potential for them to have had a devastating impact on my rambles, although I am sure that there may be some who may have welcomed that devastation 😂 They have certainly made it more difficult for us to get out and about in order for me to find some little anecdotes to write about in respect of our everyday life here in this part of Spain. However, that little voice in my head says, “When has anything ever really stopped you from finding something to ramble about Eric ?”, it may have a point 🤔

So, as the very noisy and whistling gale force wind almost relentlessy permeates my ear drums and rattles the windows, accompanied by the seriously heavy rain, which continuously hammers on the windows, I sit, with a steaming mug of coffee on the table beside me and my iPad on my lap, I place my fingers, well the usual two of them, on to the keyboard, and await for my brains cognitive diary to release the information about the things that have happened since my last publication, a couple of weeks earlier………………….

Now you will recall that on one of our recent walks, along the seafront promenade, their was an incident with a large turtle that had become entrapped in a fishing net, by the way, it has since been confirmed that it was in fact a ‘Loggerhead’, well that incident, fortunately, had a happy ending and ‘Tommy’, which I nicknamed him, although not actually knowing what gender it was, but he was released from his constraints and lived to swim, probably into another fishing net, on another day. Now, as I wrote at the time, these sort of incidents are not an everyday occurrence here and, generally speaking, we rarely witness anything too exciting happening on our daily walks. However, just like standing for hour’s waiting for a Bus, then eventually two turning up together, so it was that we encountered yet another incident, just a week later, on another of our walks and, quite coincidentally, within just a few metres of where the ‘Tommy the Turtle’ incident had unfolded.

There had been a short break in the otherwise elongated period of stormy weather, the ever present dark rain threatening clouds had suddenly parted, revealing just a glimpse of blue sky and some weak hazy sunshine managing to break through briefly, it was still a pretty blustery day but we took the opportunity to break free from our recent days of enforced confinement, dressed appropriately, prepared for the possibility of getting caught in yet another downpour. It felt so good to be able to get back outside, into the fresh air, surprisingly it was a little warmer than we had anticipated and we both unzipped our outer rain jackets. Due to these constantly and rapidly varying weather conditions, on this occasion we had decided to drive straight into the town, rather than park up at the bottom of the hill, in our usual spot in the village where we would normally take the longer walk along the seafront promenade. However, we had parked not in our usual town car park, but on the opposite side of the busy A7 road that dissects the town, the reason for doing so was actually two fold, firstly to compensate for the lack of distance we would be walking on this occasion from our more usual route, and secondly, we were parked just a shortish distance from our local high street supermarket, which we wanted to call into on our way back home, after we had called in to the ‘bank’ and ‘fruiteria’ of course. Anyway, after having crossed the footbridge that stretched across the four lane road below, we made our way down a back street towards the seafront promenade, we could see the flashing blue lights on the two Ambulances parked on the seafront, but before we got there an elderly lady, wearing slippers, I notice these kinds of small details, probably due to my previous long career as a Police Investigator 🤭 she was coming from the direction of whatever the incident was, she stopped as she reached us and rattled several sentences off, at machine gun speed, in Spanish, but we missed most of what she said apart from the words, ‘Hombre’ (Man), ‘fallecido’ (Died) and ‘caminando’ (Walking). As we approached we could hear the quite obvious sound of an elderly woman crying, quite loudly, in between these bursts of tears she was saying something, between heavy sobs, we couldn’t decipher her words. The ambulance crews had sealed off the promenade with blue and white tape, to prevent passers-by from ‘rubber necking’. We veered away from the scene and although we didn’t know the details of the actual incident, or of the people involved, from what we had been told, by the elderly slipper footed lady, and from the wails of the woman at the scene, we had already made our own assumptions. As we continued our walk, we both agreed that this incident had had a bit of a negative impact on our mood, that led to us both discussing, during our routine ‘Cafe con Leche’ stop, our own mortality and some of the realities of either of us passing away suddenly, here in Spain, without any close support from family or even friends. We have often discussed this subject, since moving here permanently and both not being spring chickens as it were, in those previous discussions we had considered the practical formalities that we would have to conduct, we both had Wills, but then there were the peculiarities of the Spanish Funeral system, burials/cremations must take place within forty-eight hours of a persons death, unless they are under suspicious circumstances, then their were the financial aspects and complications of having just one ‘Joint Account’, they freeze bank accounts totally upon a persons death 😲 So yes, we had discussed all of these things, on several occasions, but we had never really considered the immediate effect and aftermath. What if we had come out for our normal daily walk, or to do some shopping, then either one of us had keeled over and died, suddenly and right there on a public street, how on earth do you deal with that ? And for us, with no immediate family to call upon, or no real close friends, just neighbours or acquaintances, the last thing on your mind would be the formalities or practicalities, there would be the initial distress and the shock to deal with 🤷‍♂️ To say it put a real downer on our morning would be a gross understatement and whereas the ‘Tommy Turtle’ incident had had a happy ending, this one most certainly hadn’t. We both deem ourselves to be very fit and healthy, no serious underlying medical conditions and on no medications, medically prescribed or over the counter, but we have never had our good health actually medically confirmed for a long long time, but then again, why would we, surely you only visit the doctor’s when you feel really poorly, or you know that you have some sort of a medical issue that needs a specialist medical consultation 🤷‍♂️ Or perhaps Eric, you ‘are getting old’ when you start talking about getting old ?

Quite coincidentally the following morning, whilst speed reading some of the Global News Headlines, I came across an article, re-published from one that had first appeared in August 2025, something news media publications do regularly as ‘page fillers’, but again the timing being quite coincidental bearing in mind the nature of the previous days tragic incident, which had prompted personal reflections on our own health and rising age related senior status.

In 2025, Singapore became the world’s 6th ‘Official Blue Zone’ country, although, it is a little different to the other five. Researcher’s had discovered that in the already established five ‘Blue Zone’ areas, Longevity had been derived naturally, or to put it another way, nothing had been changed in these areas natural environments, their cultures, dietary aspects or traditional social lifestyles, people were living the same way today as they always had. However, in Singapore, this Blue Zone area has been physically engineered, by the Government, to promote Longevity, by providing better more environmentally friendly areas by building more Green Spaces, providing funding to promote social aspects and of course promoting and encouraging healthy dietary and fitness regimes. None of the things that had been engineered were mandatory, or enforced, but somehow it appears to have worked and over a period of several years research, the results comparisons show that more people in Singapore are living for longer.

Now I am sure that many of us know that there are numerous other countries, globally, where people can, and many do, live to be ‘Centenarians’, the main difference being that they are not in the high concentration of numbers that there are in the officially categorised ‘Blue Zone’ areas. But that got me to thinking once again, because I have visited this ‘Blue Zone’ subject before, but I continually hear the claims being made about the ‘Healthy Mediterranean Diet’, so why is it, I ask myself, that only one Island area in Greece, and one geographical area in Sardinia, has attained this ‘Official’ Blue Zone Status ? Or could it be that ‘Netflix’ documentary film makers just keep going to the same already established ‘Blue Zone’ areas or, perhaps, there are other areas currently being researched but not yet given the Longevity status 🤷‍♂️ Now of course, me being me, and nothing better to do with myself on these stormy wet weather days, I went to the font of all knowledge, yes ‘Senor Google’, well it would have been rude of me not to, and I asked the straightforward question ‘Are there any Blue Zones’ in Spain?’ However, this is the unexpected response I received………………

It took a bit of time to work out the correct phraseology, but eventually I succeeded and discovered that there is a small geographical inland area in the Region of Galicia, Northern Spain, that has a higher than average number of Centenarians but, research is still ongoing before it can be officially designated as a ‘Blue Zone’. It had been hoped that this area in Galicia would have made it into 6th place in the Blue Zone listings, unfortunately, Singapore has pipped it to the post 🤷‍♂️

Having now watched a lot of documentaries on these ‘Blue Zones’, on both ‘Netflix’ and ‘You Tube’ over the last few years, I have come to realise that this Longevity stuff is not solely about the kind of diet that you eat, although certain ‘foodie’ groups will attempt to hi-jack the ‘Longetivity’ label for their own ends, that includes ‘Vegan’, ‘Plant Based’, ‘Vegetarian’ and ‘Carnivore’ groups. Not that dietary considerations are not important, they are, but when you watch and listen to a wide variety of these documentaries, they all confirm that it is not just one thing that has been responsible, for these areas having larger than average groups of people who have become ‘Centenarians’, but it is actually a series of normal everyday lifestyle habits and behaviours, conducted over a period of decades, that have combined to create these ‘Blue Zones’, apart from Singapore that is, which has been physically engineered to promote Longevity.

One of the things that really grabbed my attention and intrigued me, and not every documentary mentioned this, but what grabbed my attention about the larger majority of these ‘Centenarians’ within the established ‘Blue Zones’, was the fact that none of them suffered with any major medical issues, No Cancers, Diabetes, Respiratory Issues, Cardiology issues and very few, if any, were medically categorised as being Obese 🤷‍♂️ Did some of them eat red meats in their diets ? Yes they did, although moderate consumption. Did they drink Wine ? Again Yes, in moderate consumption, which as you can imagine was actually music to my particular ears 😂 But what I did find amazing was, that these groups of Centenarians had all survived the Pandemic, whereas during the Covid outbreak, globally, it was the elderly (Over 65) and those ‘generally’ suffering with underlying medical conditions, who accounted for the majority of fatalities, although not all. Now most of you who have come to know me, through these rambles, know that I have a cynical and very skeptical nature, I don’t just accept what someone says, or by which spreadsheet of facts they opt to show to prove their case, and that also applies to the ‘Blue Zone’ research, but I do have to say, I found these ‘Blue Zone’ documentaries, more so the actual ‘Centanarian’ characters that were interviewed, quite inspirational and although I am not a betting man, on this occasion I would like to wager that none of these current ‘Centenarians’ give a damn about their official title, or that they live in a ‘Blue Zone’, they just carry on as normal, happy with their everyday lives and lifestyles. But here is the important ‘key factor’ that I personally take away from watching such documentaries, ‘You do not have to live in a Blue Zone to live a long, happy and healthy life’, but perhaps by adopting some of ‘their’ normal lifestyle behaviour’s and habits, within our own environments, it may just help in achieving it 😉

WOW ! All of this latest ‘Blue Zone’ stuff, that I have just rambled on about, was prompted by that one sad incident down on the Promenade, by the joint conversation that Shazza and I had had shortly afterwards, and perhaps, my own individual thoughts on it for days afterwards. It just goes to prove that things that you see, or hear, even though they may not directly involve you, can have an impact on you 🙄 However, on a much more agreeable note, to end this particular ramble, I am going to now go and engage in one of those ‘Longevity’ positive attributes, time I think to partake of a ‘large’ dose of Anti-COVID Vaccine 🍷

Wherever you may be in the world reading this, please stay safe in whatever climatic phenomenon you are currently experiencing 🙏

Until the next time………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena