Music, song, free time, and ironing Today, a friend of long standing completed a 100 Happy Days challenge begun at the beginning of the year. I think I may well have hit the like button on every one of her posts. Call me obsessive if you like, but I suppose I was motivated by the... Continue Reading →
Oh, fadista!
Imagine you have one tape cassette which you play over and over on a portable tape deck. The tape was recorded on this same tape deck while sitting as close to the gramophone as possible as a borrowed long-playing record of Amália Rodrigues singing the fado filled the air. At the end of Side 1,... Continue Reading →
Numerically fitting, more or less
51 is the number of years of marriage my parents celebrated today. I skyped the happy couple in Australia from Portugal. Full of the joys of spring, they are. 5,000 is the number that ticked over on the counter today, which tells me how many visits there have been to this blog since I migrated... Continue Reading →
The girl out of Africa
Forget the convent; the real saying is You can take the girl out of Africa, but you cannot take Africa out of the girl. Another quotation which only half-sprung to mind and strangely attributed in my internal workings to Heinrich Böll, but which it seems really belongs to Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian and philosopher (1813-1855),... Continue Reading →
Buckets of colour
I have never categorically admitted to having a bucket list. One item on that bucket list is quite complicated really. It involves mural art. I am not an artist in the professional sense of the word, although some would say a rather rigorous critic! Apart from the fact that right now I need to use... Continue Reading →
Going dental
I was going to call this post "a day in the life" or some such, but that simply would not be true. A more apt description would be an irregular day in the life during my least productive summer on record. Whenever I have something to do which is going to disrupt my preferred pattern,... Continue Reading →
Fashion Show – Desfile de Moda em Empreita
Photographs are published here with the permission of and acknowledgement to Nuno Santos. His work can be seen on his Facebook page. On Saturday evening, João went out in the car for the first time since she broke her leg on 27 May 2012. The shorter, lighter cast replaced the huge and heavy plaster one a... Continue Reading →
Click
The click I am referring to is not the sound this rather poor attempt English makes at onomatopoeia. It is the sound made when the isiXhosa word qongqothwane is correctly pronounced. Listen carefully as to how that oh-so-grand lady Miriam Makeba does it in a number made famous as The Click Song.It is also the sound... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 