I look around and I see a group of people nearing sixty. Most of my friends were born in 62, like me, so we’re fast approaching that age. A few others are slightly younger, and a few of the men are older by a few years. So, sixty it is for us. Someone was saying the other day, as a joke: “From my birthday on, if I’m run over by a car, they won’t say ‘a man was run …
Tag: friends
Let me introduce a few characters in my book, Love Secrets Lies. First there’s Teresa, the protagonist. The story spans five years of her life. When it begins, in 1975, she’s twelve, and her storybook life has just been upended by a revolution that forces her to move to a country and a city where she feels like a foreigner. Her grandparents worry too much about her, keep her under strict supervision and allowing her little freedom …
Never, as on December 31, do I feel this urge to be in Madeira, my favourite place in the world and the very best place to spend New Year’s Eve. It’s not only the fireworks, but the festive environment as well, the friends, the traditions – all of them contribute to the most unforgettable New Year’s Eve of all. I do have unforgettable memories of this night of all nights in Madeira! I never stop dreaming that one …
In Britain they call it Boxing Day . No one knows exactly why it is called like that, but the most plausible theory is that it has to do with holiday gifts, handed over in a “Christmas box”. December 26 is also St. Stephen’s Day, an early Christian martyr who was stoned to death. In our family, as in many, I expect, it is a sort of “day after”, a day of hangover, when you try to recover from …
No Christmas is exactly like the previous one. You may keep most of the rituals, the people you celebrate it with, shop in the same stores and cook the same dishes for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but still, it will feel familiar, because it will be “your” Christmas all over again. Not this year. This Christmas will be different from all the Christmases we have lived before, and, even with those few we’ll get together with, …
I’m leaving the house I have lived in for the past fifteen years. It’s part of the changing process I’m going through, actually not only me, but the boys as well. We are happy and excited about our new home, a larger apartment with the kitchen and living room of our dreams, and in a nicer neighbourhood, so much closer to most of my friends. Even so, as start packing and go through papers and find old …
She’s driving on an autumn sunny day, and on her Spotify playlist James Blunt’s nostalgic voice sings “You’re beautiful”. She remembers driving another car, years ago, while listening to that same song on the way to meet him. At the time they were working together on a project, there was nothing between them, or maybe only a feeling of growing trust, the beginning of a friendship, of shared ideas; somehow there was a taste of something good to come. And …
I have taken up running of late and I run on the streets that cross the pine forest. There are many villas there, on each side of each street, but as I run deeper into the forest there are more trees and less houses. It’s quiet, but there is always someone there, either running like me, or walking the dogs; or simply a car passing by. At daytime it’s pleasant to run or simply walk there, the smell …
Things have changed so much, no wonder we are all saying this is a very different summer from all the others we have lived through. Even though we can go to the beach, and to restaurants (preferably with terraces), and sit outside watching the sunset while sipping a mojito orcaipirinha, something that we’ve been doing for years, there’s always that feeling that something is not quite right, especially when you have to put on your mask to get …
Beli invites me to a weekend at her old country house, where we used to celebrate her birthday almost forty years ago during long weekends of never-ending fun. As we approach the entrance I’m no longer in her boyfriend’s Mercedes but in a white Mini, one of three or four cars heading towards adventure; back then it was an old farm road, winding and narrow, all ups and downs, and we had to drive carefully so as not to …
