Portuguese is something that anyone serious about spending time in Brazil will need to get to grips with. In The Strange Sounds of Brazil, I described some of the difficulties I have when communicating with Brazilians. But as well as the words and phrases, the strange vowel sounds, the accents and verbal expressions, there is another […]
We had a bit of a storm last night. I woke up around 2am (I think) to what sounded like a train coming past the window. A few minutes later the lightning started – it produced an effect similar to a small child playing with the light switch. I got up and closed all the […]
Imagine a 100% reliable hangover cure that was only available until 1pm (and you’d have to venture right out into the world to get it – it can’t be kept in your bedside drawer). That would lead to some tricky mental balancing acts on Sunday morning wouldn’t it? “My head is in a world of […]
Long (long) before I was born, back in the days when Britain had such things as colonies (nowadays they’re called British Overseas Territories), my grandparents lived in modern day Malawi (then known as Nyasaland), East Africa. Many (many) years later, after my grandparents had long since moved back to England and I had been born, […]
Hi people. Apologies for paucity of posts recently – this week I’ve been knocked out with some kind of flu that shared many symptoms with Dengue Fever: high temperature, achy joints, swollen glands, intense headache – yeuch! Luckily it wasn’t Dengue, but all the same it was very unpleasant. I’ve been spending most of my […]