An irregular diary of life in a Covid bubble – part 9

The consequence of the early February mishap was that I didn't sleep at all well that night and I was awake feeling extremely shabby early the next morning. I decided that the best thing to do was to take myself off to the beach for a bit of a run, and really there are not many better ways of getting rid of a hangover. A beautiful morning, the sea completely still, the sun coming up over the horizon, Gibraltar so clear just across the water that I could almost see the monkeys, and the coastline of Africa just a short swim away (or so it appeared).

I don't often say 'that was a lovely run' - generally I just suffer it (unlike Jan who prances along chatting to anyone that catches his eye and generally enjoying every minute) - but that really was a lovely run. Made all the better by being overtaken by Marko Djokovic (Nole's younger brother) out for his own early morning jog, and whilst I only managed to keep up for a while, it was a nice view for the time that I was following him!

I pondered whilst running how difficult it must be to be Nole's younger brother - not because of Nole being a dick (sorry) but having started his life as, apparently, the son with the most natural talent, poor old Marko never really made it and he is now a coach at the tennis centre down the road from us (and not a very good one, if the coaches at my own club are to be believed!). I remember following my own sister to school a few years after she was the 'star pupil', and being told, if I did well, that it was only to be expected (due to my being the younger sister) and when I did less well (most of the time!), that I should try to work as hard as her, blah, blah, blah.... multiply that feeling a few million times over and I suppose that is how it is for Marko...

When I started back on the blog again after a few months away, I had planned that it should be reasonably regular, but honestly, at the moment, it is difficult to write. By now, we all thought, Covid would be well and truly over (hahaha - apparently it is, if you believe what the UK government have to say), that BJ and his merry men would all have been chucked out and locked up (also hahaha, and you wonder if they ever will be), and then that we would all be able to talk about more interesting things. I do try. But whilst I can bang on indefinitely (as you have noticed) about tennis, and also about horse-racing (but I don't), plus, of course, about business (such as it is!), life is still very much a more slightly more interesting version of Groundhog Day - just as it was in the early lockdown days of 2020. Even in the CR, which can usually be depended on to throw up a few weird and wonderful things to laugh or cry about, things are relatively quiet, whilst in Spain everything has been so normal for so long now that we almost want another strict lockdown to liven things up a bit (I am joking, if anyone in the Spanish government is reading this.. .British humour!!).

One thing that I have, though, been very excited about, is that I am shortly going to be granted citizenship of Austria. Maybe I have mentioned it before in this blog, but my late Dad came to the UK as a young child on one of the 'kinder trains' just before his family were taken off to Auschwitz, and, to cut a very long story short he took British citizenship in the 50s, at the same time anglicising the family name to Weaver. It always upset me when the kids at my school never believed my stories (my Mum's being even more 'exotic' than his), but bearing in mind that I grew up in posh and very countrified Tunbridge Wells (Royal), where many of the locals have rarely if ever come across a foreigner, nor would they understand the difference between German and Austrian (hence the change of name), it is not that surprising.

Anyway, the idea of applying for Austrian citizenship came about due to Brexit, of course, and whilst it was difficult, if not impossible, when the whole Brexit mess started, somewhere along the line the Austrian government decided to allow 'children of parents or grandparents that had been displaced due to the Holocaust' to retain the citizenship of the country that they pitched up in, AND apply for Austrian citizenship too. So that meant me, and next week I will be turning up at the Austrian Embassy in Prague to be properly 'inaugurated'. I'm not quite sure what that means - presumably a new outfit is necessary, and possibly I will need to show proficiency in yodelling or something similar. But by the end of next week I will no longer be known as plain old Jo Weaver, but will take back my original name of Baroness Joanna von Weber. Or madam if that is easier.

As you might have gathered, in our household there is always an element of competitiveness in whatever we might be doing, so Jan, feeling slightly irked that I will now have citizenship or residency in three different countries, has decided that it is time for him to do something about his own roots (he is Czech with a British passport), which means that he has now decided to start the ball rolling and investigate the possibilities of applying for citizenship from his grandfather's country which, you will not be surprised to learn if you have read this blog for a while, is Serbia... I will leave it at that.