We meet occasionally at birthdays and celebrations. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we’re friends, but we enjoy talking to each other. We have the same age and share quite a few interests so it’s always good to catch up. During this birthday dinner we don’t sit near each other so at coffee time I take my cup and sit down by her. I know her mother – in her eighties – took a fall and has …
Category: Other Stories
I have read so much about Mary Queen of Scots over the years but it seems I never have enough, so when I saw the latest movie about her (directed by Josie Rourke) was coming to Lisbon last week I texted my usual Saturday-night- dinner-and-movies group and suggested we go and see it. Everyone agreed with alacrity. Knowing my passion for Scottish history my friend Beli asked me to do a brief introduction to Mary Stuart’s life during dinner, …
It was a December Saturday, precisely forty years ago. It was dusk, as it is now, and we were standing by the window looking at the blue sky slowly darkening outside. We were opening our hearts to each other and finally there was a moment when you told me you loved me, and I no longer saw the fading light but millions of fireworks exploding in the sky. A slow song began to play and you grabbed my hand and …
He sits outside and gestures for the waiter to bring him his usual espresso coffee and sparkling water. The café’s terrace if full of tourists – of course at this time of the year the island is even more crowded than in the summer, because of the mild temperatures and the brilliant celebrations of New Year’s Eve…even so, he enjoys sitting here on sunlit days, feeling the sun warm on his face and gazing at the blue sky and not …
This is a story of a love so powerful and strong that it was destined to last forever. At first sight they were as different as two people could be: he was Portuguese, from a traditional Catholic family, a man who had lived mostly in his country, a successful lawyer turned politician; she came from the cold lands of the North, was widely travelled and all but conventional. Where he had dark hair she was blonde, where he had …
I first met him more than ten years ago when he came to help me with some IT problem. He was a fat, somewhat dishevelled young man. While he fixed my pc he told me he was married and had a little daughter, and we talked about our respective children as parents often do. As we got to know each other better – I always needed his help as I changed equipments – I understood the reason why he …
Looking back to her childhood and teenage years, she thinks she probably read too many fairytales; she remembers believing they could come true. As a precocious child she read many stories, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty and from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to The Little Mermaid; as a teenager she thrived on romantic stories which most of the times had happy endings, and when they did not, such as The Little Mermaid or, later, one of her favourite …
When I see her photos, taken only a few days ago, and I see her dismal look, her stooped shoulders and her lost eyes it seems she cannot be the same happy, vivacious girl of decades ago, or the smiling, happy bride who was getting married to the most handsome sportsman in Spain. A golden youth The “infanta” (as princesses are called in Spain) Cristina is the second daughter of former King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain. …
Lying on his hospital bed, he knows this is the brief moment of twilight when it is no longer day but night hasn’t yet arrived. He is dying but somehow he won’t let go. His wife of many years sits on the bed holding his hand. She speaks softly to him, but suddenly her image is not the one he sees, her voice is not the one he hears. Standing before him is another feminine figure – a slim, dark haired …
She was ten. Only a girl, little more than a child, really, but she liked to say she was a “pre-teenager”. She knew she looked older; she was tall, with long legs and her brown eyes shone in her cinnamon skin, tanned by the tropical sun. She had long, straight dark hair that came to the middle of her back and a ready smile. She was full of romantic dreams; in a time without television the evenings were long …