I find the spider that I tried to save in the little bucket with bleach where I always immerse the washing-up brush to keep things nice and fresh. She was suddenly there. That is a typical characteristic of spiders, they’re suddenly there. They can suddenly pop up from behind a shutter (the so-called pop-up-spiders), they …
When this one’s finished (well, it is, almost! Just some finishing touches), I thought it was time to do the whole facade of the bathhouse, village-square-center-side. This little corner is next to our little café. You’ll see it when you go up the stairs. Time for a new mosaic project A friend would come, and …
I bought the eucalyptuses when they were still tiny with only a few little leaves for 10 cents each We had talked about it extensively: how much water eucalyptus suck up. While working for a real estate agent, in the preparatory phase of our emigration, I visited a casa-murada-com-quintal (I belonged to the rústico department) …
– They even wake up laughing, I think, as I sweep up the leaves of the nespereira, and I hear the laughter from behind the hotel rooms. How special is that! Yesterday afternoon Wil, the teacher of the painting course, came into the kitchen with: “Now we all get the giggles” – which I thought …
Nobody knows how many times it has been. We’ve all lost count in all those years that we’ve been living here in Termas-da-Azenha. And it’s all caused by fear. O yeah? What’s up? Fear of flying, that is what’s up My brother doesn’t like to fly. Many more people have that (maybe they’ll save our …
Her son Olle is sitting on a stool in the kitchen, radiant and at ease, and chewing a chocolate easter egg. Sixteen years ago, when his mother was sitting here in the kitchen just as radiantly and at ease, he didn’t yet exist. When she came here with her Volkswagen, she did exactly the same …
We are doing well, thank you. We’re doing the spring cleaning. Cleaning inside and out, throwing away, planting little flowery plants, pruning trees. Washing curtains. Cleaning walls with high pressure, paint, scratch, paste, mow. “Yes! Broes (my son), they went out! Come on, we can go!” Of course, there are guests in the meantime, and …
All my theater clothing went, long ago, in that big truck that brought all our belongings to Portugal. It spent the first year in boxes, because it took a while before all those things could be distributed throughout our little village. The first occasion for using it was a colorful evening by the first group …
It was such a day today. It was already clear last night that the kitchen faucet had health problems. The hot water tap turned loosely and made a strange sound. It is one of the 9 kitchen faucets here in the village, and the most used. Used day in, day out; just keep on running …
