The 25th of April is the anniversary of the 1974 revolution that put an end to more than four decades of a dictatorship regime in Portugal. It also changed my life and that of my family forever and that’s why even after so many years I still have mixed feelings about it, and get emotional when it is discussed. For me there is a life before that day, a peaceful one, of a happy privileged childhood and endless summer days, …
Category: Personal
I love the quietness of a Sunday morning. Like today. It’s winter, if not at its peak, certainly at its worst. Outside it’s raining, even stormy, and I wake up late – what luxury- and I enjoy the warmth under my duvet and allow myself to daydream. “All is well in my world”, as in one of my favourite Louise Hay’s cards. The boys are home, safe and sound after a rugby afternoon and night out. They must have come …
When I look back to that New Year’s Eve of thirty five years ago I cannot help thinking it was the best of my life. Because it closed my year of “living dangerously”, a year when I mostly did what I pleased without any attachments or obligations; a year when I felt free, wild, independent; because it was spent in the best place to spend that very special night when you go from one year to another – Madeira; and …
Every year, as Christmas decorations appear I begin to feel nostalgic about other Christmases, of long ago. If I think about it, it seems I’ve had this feeling during most of my life, as after coming from Mozambique we missed our warm and merry Christmases out there. Only when the boys were small did I recover some of the magic of Christmas and I loved seeing the wonder in their eyes as they looked at the lights, as they expectantly …
In your life sometimes you meet someone with whom you feel a strong connection, a special empathy, and when you get to know that person a little better you suddenly find yourself thinking: ” If only…”. If only we were not married, if only we didn’t live so far apart, if only our lifestyles were not so different, if only I could find a job in another city…”. As life goes on and you get older it seems your “if …
I’m on a plane once again and I close my eyes and look back to the summer that has just ended. I’m a summer person – I suppose due to being born in Mozambique where we had warm weather almost all year long – so I long for Spring and Summer, strongly dislike autumn and really dread the winter months. In April and May I feel that delightful expectation of the summer months to come, and September, even if the …
As we take the cable car to go down to the beach of Garajau I remember another time when I stood on the high cliff looking down and he was telling me how special this place was for him and how he wanted to share it with me. By then there were no cable cars and we walked hand in hand down to the pebbled beach. Today the sky is overcast and the sea looks like silver; back then the …
As I wait to board the plane I think some things never change, such as the gestures, rituals, hopes, feelings, that have always been intrinsically linked to most of the months of August of my life. As coming to Madeira. Yesterday as I was ironing some clothes to bring with me I recalled it used to be a sort of “pre Madeira ritual”. I did it in Granny’s sunlit kitchen and it made me so happy that to this day …
Dear readers I dedicate this post to you, so that I may thank you for reading my blog and following me on Facebook. I want to tell you how and above all why it all began. A few years ago I started feeling this urge to write. At first I began writing a book about my professional experiences but then I thought it wasn’t the right time to write about it – not yet. So, I thought, why not write …
I’m sitting outside the Café de la Paix, one if the most iconic cafes in Paris, and all kinds of thoughts come to my mind. First of all, I feel contented. It is a warm summer evening and I’m sitting here by myself, feeling the city all around me. So many people pass by, a Japanese fashion victim impeccable from head to toe, an Eastern family with three small children, the veiled mother pushing a double pram and hurrying behind her …