Madrid, on a cold January morning. I come out of my hotel, superbly located in the fashionable Salamanca quarter. I cross the street and enter the coffee shop. Sitting at table in a corner I see my friend Bea and her husband, Arturo Fuentes the writer, whom I’m meeting today for the first time even if I’m already his reader and follower on Facebook. An unexpected writer Bea and I have been friends for years. We met professionally but …
Tag: Scotland
I have read so much about Mary Queen of Scots over the years but it seems I never have enough, so when I saw the latest movie about her (directed by Josie Rourke) was coming to Lisbon last week I texted my usual Saturday-night- dinner-and-movies group and suggested we go and see it. Everyone agreed with alacrity. Knowing my passion for Scottish history my friend Beli asked me to do a brief introduction to Mary Stuart’s life during dinner, …
I have read much about Scotland and have travelled there twice, so I feel I am well acquainted with its folklore, but I have recently learned about a new legend of the Highlands, that of the “water demon”, or, in Gaelic, each- uisge. This creature is described as a water horse that appears on the shores of lochs (Scottish lakes) and whispers in order to attract its victims. When mounted by humans, it takes them into the water and devours …
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 first read this book during the summer holidays of 93. I was undergoing the treatment for my endometriosis, hoping that I might get pregnant and the hormones I was taking left me very much on edge (one of the side effects, among some nastier ones), so we had decided on a quiet holiday by ourselves, in a somewhat secluded place, and we found that in the dam of Montargil, in the Alentejo region. By then it was not easy to …