It’s a Saturday morning of an Autumn that has suddenly turned cold but sunny! The sky is blue, and it’s so good to walk on the street and feel the cold, and the sun, on our faces. I’m walking side by side with my son Pedro; we are having lunch at a restaurant where I used to go often with Dad and Ilda (my stepmother) in the good old days of my youth, and I’m telling Pedro old stories about …
Tag: friends
When we were young there was no expression such as “BFF” (Best Friends Forever) and it’s difficult to tell, when a friendship begins, how long it will last, but after almost fifty years of friendship, I believe we can say we are Best Friends Forever. When we were young Only yesterday when you organised the usual family reunion that happens whenever we come over for holidays, I was telling someone we were classmates for only two years, back in …
I’m on my way to work and although it’s only four kilometres I get a lot of traffic. I face the day in a bright mood so I put on some nice music and look at life on the streets. Today the latest song on my playlist is by a Portuguese band called Capitão Fausto. The title is “Boa memória” (“good memory” in English) and the singer tells us about how he doesn’t really have to remember things for …
I’m driving – not exactly driving home for Christmas, as in the beautiful song by Chris Rea, but on one of the many errands I have to do during this busy season. As usual at this time of the year I put on Christmas songs, the inevitable Last Christmas by Wham and Chris Rea’s as well – and I sing along. The weather is fine – one of those sunny crisp cold (but not too much) winter days that make …
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 …
Long ago Christmases were a magical time. Our eyes opened in wonder with the lights and gifts around the Christmas tree; we sat on the floor around Granny as she made the Nativity crib and we helped her by giving her figure after piece until the last one, the shining star that she put on the stable’s roof. Then she would tell us, year after year, how Jesus was born and how he was visited by three kings with gifts, …
If you have followed me for some time you know by now that I love summer in all its manifestations – even the heat doesn’t bother me. Unlike many Portuguese, who show up with black shadows under their eyes due to lack of sleep on hot summer nights, the heat suits me – in fact it is the cold that makes me want to hibernate and only wake up after the long dark months are over. However, as much …
Wednesday evening of the strangest summer I can remember. Are we really in July or have we set the calendar wrong? – we ask ourselves one grey morning after another. Last year it was the tragedy of the wildfires – now sadly replicated in Greece – and now there is even a joke on internet about someone asking our prime minister – highly criticised last year because his government was anything but effective regarding the fires – how he plans …
I began writing as a young girl; I wrote a diary, and I kept it to myself, locked in a most secret place, Back then I wrote simply because I enjoyed pouring my thoughts onto paper, and like Anne Frank – whose Diary had impressed me very much – I wrote to an imaginary friend, whom I called Ana. I kept a diary for several years until one day I suspected Granny was going through my secrets and I dropped …
