Only last week I read about a new TV series that will begin tomorrow on History Channel, called “Barbarians rising” – it tells the story of nine “barbarian” warriors who contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire – and one of the episodes will feature Viriato, a Lusitanian warrior that we Portuguese consider to be the first of our national heroes, long before our first king Afonso Henriques, also a revered figure in our history. Both men had at least …
Category: Other Stories
She was a happy, carefree girl, and pretty too – she had large inquisitive green eyes, dark blonde long hair, perfect teeth and a contagious smile. She was reckless. She lived with her parents and brothers and sisters – there were nine of them– in a farm in Transvaal, South Africa. She loved to run across the fields and lose herself in the many acres of her parents’ property. She knew she had to take care because there were wild …
First days of September. He is driving his motorbike and he is going fast. He is meeting his girlfriend of many years ago, now with the comfortable status of an old friend, for lunch. He parks in front of the restaurant and he is leaning against his bike when he sees her at the bottom of the street. She looks almost the same as before – the same slim figure, the same dark hair – only not curly now, as …
She hasn’t heard that song in a long time but as it plays now on the radio she remembers how many times in her life it has inspired her in difficult moments and given her the courage to move on. She first heard the song by Gloria Gaynor in 1978, she thinks. It was one of the songs of that summer that played at the disco on the Algarve and it had the power to bring everybody to the dance …
She is reading a magazine and as she turns the page she suddenly sees him, smiling down at his new love, the woman who took him away from her, from his family, the woman she hates. In fact she should hate him too, if only it had not been such a habit to love him – after all they were together for more than forty years, a lifetime together. And now, this. She knew there had been others, of course. …
The forest of Paimpont, in Brittany, is believed to be the forest of Brocéliande of the Arthurian tales, so it’s no wonder every corner is filled with legends and stories of ancient mysteries. As a reader of those legends they are not new to me, but still, when you visit these places somehow new stories emerge, or maybe just different versions of the stories you have read about. On my DK Eyewitness travel book about Brittany I had read about …
The 10th of July will be remembered as the day when the Portuguese national team won the European football championship. One might add – against all odds. I don’t like football but I love a good story – and this one I find incredible. I think it all began twelve years ago, when the European cup took place in Portugal and the coach then – Felipe Scolari, a Brazilian – asked every Portuguese to put a flag in his or …
Love and hate are extreme emotions and one may easily follow the other. Usually, the latter follows the former – the inverse is rare. He knows it because he has seen it in his parents. During his childhood he recalls they were a loving, happy couple. He was the eldest, followed four years later by his brother and almost immediately their sister was born. Their parents were dedicated to them, their mother more present in their daily life, as their …
Now that “surrogate motherhood” is being discussed in European countries and raising considerable controversy (only this week the President of the Republic of Portugal vetoed the draft law regulating it in Portugal, considering there had not been enough discussion and ethical questions had not been clarified), I found myself thinking about this very complicated subject, in my opinion, and some stories that I know about people wanting to have children and finding it difficult or even impossible. I know what …
She arrived from Paris on a cold February Friday evening and he was waiting for her at the airport. She had been there on a training week and God knew how she had needed that space. She needed time away from him, from work, from home, from their problems. She needed distance; she needed to confirm there was a whole different world out there, different from the one she had built around him. She needed to understand her feelings – …