There it is. Another month of August is over. No other month leaves me with such a nostalgic feeling of time gone by too quickly. No other month has ever given me this need to hold time prisoner in my hands and make it stop. And it has been like this for a long time. Not back in Mozambique, though. August there was a winter month, even if our winter there was mild for all standards. But since we came …
Category: Personal
Just to say these words fills me with a nostalgic feeling of days gone by. Precisely last Monday I was commenting with my younger son: “ First of August…you know, Pedro, my wildest dream is that I could time travel…”. He immediately asked “Mom, which time would you travel to?”. I smiled and replied “Well, I would probably take two different sorts of trips – one to periods I’m very interested in, certainly the Middle Ages…and then I would go …
It’s seven am of a glorious summer day and I’m catching the train on my way to a work meeting in the North. As I sit at the window I notice that two young girls – around thirteen and eleven, are trying to accommodate their heavy bags in the luggage compartment, the elder taking care of things while the younger helps. Then I hear some havoc outside the window and when I look I see a couple, their parents for …
Sunday noon at Barcelona airport. Nuno and I are coming back from a weekend with his son Francisco and his Catalan wife Mati. We have checked in online but they have large bags. There are tons of people everywhere. Heavily armed policemen patrol the airport – supposedly security is even tighter because of the recent Munich attacks. While we wait for them to check in we hear a child cry in rage. It’s a girl – around five – who …
My life has always been inextricably linked to the beach, the sea – one way or another. I’m a true “Beach baby” like the song by First Class I heard back in the seventies. I was born in a city by the Indian sea, and I have photos of my first years where I am dipping my toes into the sea water with a look of delight in my face… years later, when I was twelve, I remember another day …
When the famous song by the Boomtown Rats came out in 1979 everyone sympathised and we sang it with all our hearts “Tell me why, I don’t like Mondays…I want to shoot…the whole day down!”. It’s a general feeling – even on the radio, on Monday mornings the presenters will wish us courage to face the day and the week that will follow… But if Mondays are the harsh truth of another week, then Sunday afternoons are the most nostalgic …
Where else could it be but Scotland? Land of castles, misty lochs, fierce clans and relentless fighters for freedom. The land of Mary Stuart and William Wallace, of Robert the Bruce and Rob Roy…of the Loch Ness Monster and bagpipes and ghost stories… All of this and much more had made this trip one much desired, much planned for. Miguel and I had wished to go there for years and, as I read more about Scottish history, I was more …
I’ve always said that after I’m dead I don’t care about what happens – after all I believe that my soul, that essence that determines what I am, will have flown to another dimension. But then of course the people in my life will stay on, and I sometimes I think what words I would like to leave them, along with the memory of what I have meant to them in this world. To my mother I would say …
Humans are very emotional beings. I would go as far as to say we really live of emotions. First, as babies, there’s all that emotion towards our mother, our father, our brothers and/ or sisters, those that take care of us…then at school, towards our friends…as we grow into our teens, of course, romantic emotions are in the order of the day. And these will accompany us throughout our lives, as we live through our relationships. Then come the strongest …
I have always believed we can conciliate the many facets of our lives – personal and professional, hobbies, sport, etc – and for me the concept of “conciliating” comes very naturally. Maybe this was due to the fact that in my family this was not really the case – while Granny was a housewife and totally dedicated to her family, Mom was very much the opposite and very much career-driven. In my case, up to a certain age I was …