Oblivion

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

we just come back from the residential home. This place has a beautiful garden and its installations are bright and clean with a loving and competent personal who look after of my lady´s sister. Because she has been living there for a few years.

Cheap shags

When one reaches my age one believes that nothing can surprise you, but this is a flagrant mistake. One believes you have already seen all. However when you least expect it, bang! A new monstrosity makes you wobble.

Pack

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear  Fran,

       every day I get learning more, at least that I think. These weeks I have known a new word. Well, the word I already knew it, but I was ignorant of one meaning. The word in question turned out to be has four letters, a ‘p’, an ‘a’, a ‘c’ and a ‘k’. Pack.

Sleeping in a shack

What Leonardo Sakamoto remarks in his article is the importance of mobilization of the workforce and the fight of modest people. A force that bring together who were ‘out’ the system created by the system and that had its highlight five or six years ago in countries like Greece, Italy and Spain.

Drought

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

it infuriates me that the meteorologists say we enjoy a ‘good weather’ when they want to say it is not going to rain, when the water restrictions are carrying out in many villages.

Os azuis mais azuis, os rosas mais rosas 

The contraption was flying just above the ground I don´t know for how long and covered I don´t know how many meters, when, suddenly, it started to lose altitude crashing into the ground. Why this experiment failed? Maybe the amber, maybe the diameter of the spheres wasn´t appropriate or maybe certain metals didn´t work because the priest´s iron will was beyond all doubt.

Who will sit in the Presidential box of the Opera House?

When I was a child I thought that, in the whole world, there should have a one and only king and this way there wouldn´t have wars any more.

Godoy in Ireland. Coming back to Dublin

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

This is the last e-mail that Godoy sent me. On it he speaks about his return to Dublin and his farewell of Ireland.

Godoy in Ireland. Galway

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

This is the third instalment. I hope you are enjoying these posts about Ireland …

Godoy in Ireland. Sligo

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

After Dublin, my friend Godoy was in Sligo and from there he sent me …

Godoy in Ireland. Dublin

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear fran,

My friend Godoy has come back from Ireland and he sent me his impressions:

Cacela Velha 

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

The next day after Mariza´s concert I went up to the beach. The sea always gives me tranquility. I was walking, barefoot, on the sand for a while and when the lunchtime was nearly, a name attracted me: Cacela Velha.

Political ferment

It was happened by sheer chance that I bought the book. It was by sheer chance that while I was reading the chapter entitled `Demons and Dragons´ people were going for a walk in the Rambla too.

That bloke in the pub* 

The Guardian. An article signed by Owen Jones. Boris Johnson should be sacked by Theresa May.

According to Mr Jones, Boris Johnson is a clown (in the most pejorative sense and respecting to the real clown, of course).

O gente da minha terra 

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

It was a gift.

A day my lady found me listening to her, not to my lady. she was singing Chuva. She was Mariza.

Tribes

The Diário de Notícias newspaper comes thin but it´s worth. It´s only 1.20€ and brings a “succulent” interview with António Araújo.

It´s a long interview, from page 4^th to page 7^th, and there are some points that I start to emphasize…

The perfect script

Why did the crowd boo the athlete? The London Stadium was a single voice. Each apparition was met with a deafening BOOOO…

«I didn´t deserve boos», said Justin Gatlin.

A very expensive pic

The monotonous puff-puff-puff from the sprinkler on the grass sounds like a lullaby for the nap.

The sings of the cicadas and the crickets overlap at dusk.

Malta deserves a glance

     The recent history of Malta has three important dates.

290511 Let´s give to the love another chance.

The Godmother

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     One cannot expect anything from anyone. Or one can expect all from anyone, my lady said with a shrug.

     I don´t understand some people. Today I eat you with kisses and tomorrow I do not want to know anything about you, she continued.

The Violence of Austerity 

    The book has been written and edited by Vickie Cooper and David Whyte.

    Mr Whyte is Professor of Socio-legal studies at the University of Liverpool. He has written for The Guardian, The Herald and The Age and the Red Pepper.

    Vickie Cooper is a lecturer and researcher of Social Policy and Criminology at the Open University.

Footballers and Inland Revenue

   A matter draws me this morning. Apparently several footballers —and several coaches— in Spain owe more than 20 million of euros to the Spanish Fisco. That is not new.

Beatrice´s dream

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

     I am writing this letter to you for the reason that I have received news from England. Beatrice, my sister, is in good health and she continues in the convent. I heard about it through an acquaintance.

Goodness versus simpleness

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Fran, do you think wives are selfish? I will try to explain why this question.

Amar pelos dois 

“True originality in art is never an aim but a reward”

                                                            John Berger

Some facts happened last weeks have given me a bit of hope.

Arrepio  

Each time Little Manuel woke up he saw dark figures beside his bed.

In the small hours monks used to approach the bed number 38 at the Dona Estefânia Hospital in Lisbon. We are talking of the year nineteen forty.

DO NOT BREAK THE CHAIN

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     I came across the letter while I was cleaning the larder. It was inside a china pot, folded four times.

Guernica

Picasso had no inspiration. Although he wanted to be working for the Muses´ visit, he did not make progress. The artist had a job commissioned by the Government of the Second Republic to exhibit at the International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life, in Paris, 1937.

261 Fearless

Once upon a time there was a young woman who wanted to run. And once upon a time too a city which didn´t have rules referred to the Marathon race and women. In other words, women couldn´t run. Period.

Was this Boston Marathon for men only?

Easter Sunday

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     He was the first person whom I heard this tradition. My grandfather, he was.

     He told me that there was the custom of seeing the day break from a hill and asking for a wish.

Efeito vacina 

Despite my interest about the History I didn´t know the episode that Sebastião Bugalho describes —page 11, SOL, Edição Nº5533, 3 Abril 2007— so majestically. This young boy, with all due respect, tell us what happened in the Ancient Greece.

Vera Stanhope 

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

my friend Godoy has sent me an e-mail about the Hadrian´s Wall. He is watching the Wall again because there is a TV series entitled Vera based on books written by Ann Cleeves.

You need a spade to clean the coop

Boy, I know why politicians say so many silliness.

I´m finishing Harari´s book —Homo Deus— and the third section in it is really brilliant. The paragraphs grab your attention  and you go through its pages without realizing how time flies.

An Andalusian house

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

the vicarage had two doors: the front door and the back one. The back door looked out onto the orchard and the kitchen garden. The front door looked out onto the lane.

About bravos and cabrestos

Living in Portugal I´m getting familiar with some Portuguese customs like bullfighting, called touradas here. The truth is I prefer to see these magnificent animals in the countryside but I must say I´ve witnessed this activity occasionally.

Give me a reason to live

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Dear Fran,

     I´ve always worked a lot in spite of my father thought on the contrary. And I never thought I was special, however hard he pointed at my leg. 
     I´m disabled.

Brexit means Brexit May dixit

To start with, I was against leaving EU.

Said this I ought to explain why I disagree with many defeatists who they think that Brexit will be a catastrophe to Britons.

Win the race and be honest

Dear Sir or Madam,

In Joana Petiz´s article Das cosas boas desta cidade, the journalist has given me a little joy. In that article she makes an itinerary about the Pavilhão Carlos Lopes.

Ribs

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     Today on my  return from the market I have seen a little coalbird. It was on a fence, swaying its red tail up and down. It was a female but the male was eight or ten meters further.

Bankers are not like vampires

I know there are animals that sucker blood from other ones, but I didn´t know that there are vampires that they give their blood to others.

When i became I

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     Dear Fran,

     You have seen I use the capital letters if I have to write surnames and first names –like Beatrice, Violet and Hope- and when I write any word after a dot. In cities, rivers, mountains, week days, months, seas and, the most important, when I have to say I.

Sweet Bird of Youth?
What do we do with young people?

We are giving them messages like “ go on your bone-idle life because your aims are still a long way off”, “ go on your childhood, because adulthood is in distance”, “bind your trade mark trainers, your skateboard, your cap on not quite straight and –you know the song- don´t worry, be happy”, “all of your mates do the same”.

Pianoforte

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

Fran, that night the vicar´s wife couldn´t sleep; I asked her if she wanted anything to eat or drink and if she wanted me to do summat.

Cadeia classificada monumento nacional

Settled in the south of Portugal since my retirement I largely enjoy this corner. After more than forty years putting up with bigwigs I deserve a better weather, better landscape and better hour hand.

Sons that father would have had

I´m learning to read and write and I like to do it on my own. All help is very welcome

     Fran,

my father knew me extraordinarily. I still remember when in one occasion I said him that my sister was sorting or searching a sheep. He stared at me and suddenly slapped me without saying a word. He knew I was lying, yet it was a lie that was not to my profit. I did it cause she asked me to do it.

Bankiticians

   According to Yuval N. Harari in his book Homo Deus. A brief History of Tomorrow (p.64), nobody can predict how the global economy will be in ten years´ time.