Home Away From Home

All of me is playing on my brand new Amazon Music. I love it and I am on song one. I miss music. I realized it a while back, but now that I drive a short 10 minutes to the train station every morning I recognize my old self singing and thinking nothing for the short duration of the songs that the UK radios allow in the morning. They are clearly more into talking.  I sit after a night in with by babe C. I decided to take an easy one tonight and we had dinner in our brand new kitchen counter, reading stories and feeding each other (yes, she also fed me). I took it as peaceful as possible (within the constraints of having a feisty 2 year old) and we finished with cookies and cuddles in the sofa.  I now sit down with Lisbon and the river coming from the left of my window all the front and towards Cascais the lights on my right. I know it won't be a productive night but I also know it does not have to be. It is just what I need, after a happy day celebrating my Dad's 70 and ha

As life moves on in London, the few years have now become 11 years and I can't help but wondering. As we get into a bigger rent, school fees, nanny and everything else we already had before, you are not as far from break even as you would hope to be for living away from your home for 11 years.  The feeling is more accute after buying the house in Lisbon, that is for sure. It is not that I did not grow to love London - I really do. I would miss our life here, the feeling of only having ourselves to respond to, the spontaneous brunches, visits to the park at C's insistence, the Sunday mass just the 3 of us, my friends. And work of course, I would miss work, because I am still quite fond of it. Perhaps because it was the only thing I was not afraid to change over the last years.  But then I wonder if a career change would also not be in order - even though I committed to put my dedication to entrepreneurship on hold for this year - except legal flow - it is dormant and sometimes w

 The day we bought a house was the day we moved in. This time we had planned to allow time for things to flow, cleaning, movers, gardener. But then everything failed and the exchange date kept being postponed. In the end, the day we bought the house was the day to do it all. As we signed close to 2 pm, the movers started unloading at 3pm, we unpacked and assembled and sat down in our newly IkEA bought garden furniture for some tapas at 7pm. We slept in our own bed, exhausted but happy that sometimes dreams come true. C was excited to pieces and well worth all the trouble of finding a (future) home with so much space to run around.  Tomorrow we need to go and only had a few moments to enjoy but we leave with more certainty of how much we want to return. (Especially because our new home in London is still in boxes)