Another little nugget for the locals and/ or those of you planning to visit Bcn. This city is blessed with beaches close at hand but many visitors choose to amble down to the Barceloneta and burn off their hang-overs on those three or so kms of dusty sand, amidst the pigeons and the pick-pockets and […]

Read more "Premià"

“Do you know why you are here?” Mr King asked us rhetorically, no doubt after seeing our bovine gazes over the last hour or so, as he attempted to drill aspects of organic chemistry into our unreceptive minds. “You aren’t really here to learn chemistry and I’m not really here to teach you the chemistry […]

Read more "The point of the exercise"

Another nugget: At Belas Artes we were required to take a rather dense course in Aesthetics – Aesthetics 1,2 and 3 – in years two, three and four of our degree. Our professor was a very clever and lean young man who spoke very well ( although with a slight tendency to speak fast and […]

Read more "On aesthetics"

Just a little anecdote that came up last night in conversation and made me smile as I remembered it – Six years ago or so, I had been working for Roche a few months and one of my Spanish colleagues, whose command of English was rather sketchy, came to me and asked me to help […]

Read more "On grammar"

After my disastrous two years in London at The Bartlett from 1991 to 1993 – an expensive non-event that amounted to sweet fuck all and that cost my father a fair amount of money that at that time he could ill afford to waste – upon my return to Portugal I began to have intense […]

Read more "Mindgames"

Little nuggets that I still retain: In the late seventies my father had been posted to Holland and we lived in a beautiful postcard duplex flat overlooking a canal in Delft. My grandfather, at that time, was very busy with his business affairs in Latin America, flying back an forth at quite a pace, and […]

Read more "On departure"

Barring Brian Manning, who taught me art for the five years I was at boarding school, the only other master who accompanied my secondary education for the full five years I was there was Martin King who taught us Spanish. I liked him very much and his classes – right the way through my time […]

Read more "A brief reflection"

I am the oldest of us siblings. Sacha comes next, four years and three months behind me, and Emma holds our rearguard, six years and six months after Sacha. For six of those ten years before Emma appeared in our lives, it was Sacha and I. Sacha was everything a little girl should be; delicate, […]

Read more "Just desserts"

Beer o’clock kicked off the other day just shy of six pm and about two and a half hours early; no prior swimming, no running, no cycling, “no nothing!” I sat down at “Marcel” and told the waiter I might be there for a while. So I sat outside and sipped one beer after another […]

Read more "Zeitgeist"

The following anecdote came up in conversation with Valen and Valentina one night they came over to have dinner at ours. I hadn’t heard it before so I assume Yael came out with this on some occasion when I wasn’t present because had I heard him say what I’m told he said I would have […]

Read more "Rocco or Rambo"