A Geordie In Girona

Author: A Geordie In Girona

  • Artificial Intelligence – are we all doomed?

    In this post, I reflect on the rapid evolution of AI and its impact on various industries, particularly translation, writing, and creative professions. While acknowledging advancements in machine translation and automation, great concern is expressed about job losses, diminished human creativity, and the proliferation of misleading or offensive AI-generated content. The future remains uncertain, but…

  • End of the road – high taxes make self-employment in Spain unsustainable

    Ever since I received my Spanish residency card back in August 2022 (see main picture), I’ve tried my best to scrape a living as a translator. A few weeks ago, however, I lost my most important client and it meant I could no longer afford to stay in business. This is because even if I…

  • Travel Tales from a Backpack Diary – book update

    It was Benjamin Franklin who said: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Well, 20 years or so ago, I did something worth writing – I travelled the world for a year – and, by jingo, now I had something worth reading to write about! As I travelled, I kept a diary,…

  • The seventh child of the seventh child – a tribute to James Hunter Alexander

    On the back of Newcastle United winning the Carabao Cup in March, I had planned to write a follow-up to my previous post so I could rave about a Newcastle team that had finally ended a Wembley hoodoo that stretched back 70 painful years. I had also intended to mention my dad. He was fortunate…

  • Buffoonery, self-doubt and failure – time to end Newcastle’s Wembley hoodoo

    It’s been 70 years – yes that’s right 70 years! – since Newcastle United last won a domestic trophy. The Magpies did famously win the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1969 – the forerunner to the Europa League – but if we want to witness the last time a Newcastle team held aloft a domestic trophy…

  • Love is in the air – Happy Valentine’s Day!

    Happy Valentine’s Day to one and all! I hope you have a day overflowing with love on what is a wonderful time for anyone working in the flower, chocolate, fine dining or rubber johnny business! 😍 A couple of quick facts about me and Valentine’s Day: Uno – my granddad on my mother’s side was…

  • Catalina La Grande – homage to a Yorkshire terrier

    Catherine II, most commonly known as Catherine the Great (Catalina La Grande in Spanish), was the 18th Century Russian Empress who came to power after overthrowing her husband Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of…

  • 2025 – damp squibs, butchery and a load of old tosh!

    2024 was a funny old year and not one I will remember with any great fondness. I had hoped it might be the year that my business would take off but, if anything, it was worse than 2023 – a year which promised so much but ended up being a damp squib. It’s a bit…

  • From innuendo to bad translation – strange and wonderful signs from around the world

    As someone who has travelled far and wide, I have seen more than my fair share of bizarre signs that have given me cause to raise an eyebrow or left me tittering and giggling like a daft schoolboy. It might be the name of a business or a product that is completely acceptable in the…

  • A Geordie in Girona – a new name, the future for translators, last year’s business and a cheeky side project

    A name change It was sometime in the middle of last year that I changed my business name to A Geordie in Girona but, for one reason or another, I never really got round to mentioning it. When I began as a translator in early 2021 I came up with the name Lucid Eye Translations.…

  • Football superstitions – one for sorrow, two for joy

    There is a well-known nursery rhyme related to magpies that goes ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’. As a life-long Newcastle United fan, whose nickname is the Magpies, this rhyme takes on special significance. If this black and white bird were to cross my path on match days, it could have serious repercussions. Seeing two…

  • World Geordie Day – a pipedream or reality?

    For a number of years, I’ve had an idea in the back of my head that the good folk of Newcastle should have a day, or a weekend, of celebration in recognition of our beautiful city and what it means to be a Geordie. I’ve always imagined something like a festival that would take us…