As part of the Alvaro de Campos Festa, I helped organise an Open Mic Night in English and Portuguese on Friday 22 November. It was a fun evening of kindness, sharing, poetry and song. Big thanks to all the performers, poets and especially to Tela Leao for translation and for introducing everyone. Also gratitude to…
Rob Hopkins founder of the Transition Movement is touring Portugal starting in the North and reaching Faro on the 26 October. “Transition is a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world.” The tour will include interactive workshops, discussions and conversations. Central to this tour is the theme of imagination, especially in…
The Álvaro de Campos Festival / Birthday Party takes place in Tavira from 15 October to 30 November each year. Last year, I helped organise an impressive and enjoyable Open Mic Night in the cold of winter. On Friday, 22 November this year (2024), we will try again to bring musicians, poets and writers together to perform…
Tavira and Glasgow have a cultural connection that is about to become even more potent. In 2019 two Scottish poets performed in Tavira, together with their Portuguese colleagues, and this year the event will take place in Glasgow. Unfortunately, there is not enough money for travel and hotels. From the total costs of € 6.000…
Jim and I travelled in May and June (for nearly seven weeks) to the UK, Greece and Ireland. We are now back in Portugal. This latest post is some reflections on Birmingham, UK, our first stop. I may share more from my journal about Bloomsbury and then Ireland in other posts. The last time we…
Some days I just want to bottle moments of joy. That not being possible, on International Women’s Day 2024, I decided to start recording the events of a magical day from earlier in the week. Four women had a mission, an electric car, which I drove and the sun on our backs. You could call…
The turn of the year is a time I usually create a mandala. It is a moment where I set an intention for the year ahead. In a few days it will be 2023, so I have talked to a few friends and invited them to paint, draw or collage at my home near Tavira…
I don’t want to focus my thoughts on war right now or the arguments about who is right or wrong. What I need is hope. So with that purpose in mind I have edited and updated this article first written in 2014. Maybe it will resonate with your desire for peace and hope too. Image…
Leaving San Francisco, we stopped off in Berkeley, or to be precise, we went onto the University campus. I half hoped to see Barbra Streisand or at least a few students demonstrating, calling out lies, declaring a strike, or asking for signatures for a petition. I love that part in the film ‘The Way We…
In 2017, Jim and I started talking about a trip to California. My ageing hippy consciousness kept telling me to go and visit the places I grew up in films and books. I also now have a couple of dear American friends, one of whom lived in California and helped with ideas for the trip….
