Category: firstyearinlondon

London 11/11/1989 Saturday Carmen arrived last night, bringing news, hot from the press, Veja, Casseta, JB, O Globo… The election has become the joke of the century! Sarney, wanting to topple Collor, asked Silvio Santos to put himself forward as a candidate. The idiot accepted it! The PMB candidate sold his ‘sigla’ (acronym) to Silvio…

London 09/11/1989 Thursday We have a place to live and we start moving tomorrow. Carmen is due to arrive tomorrow too. My mum went to see it on her own, so I don’t know what I’ll be moving into. All I know is that it’s one-bedroom, split level, on the Piccadilly Line, near Arsenal Station.…

London 07/11/1989 Tuesday Diva leaves this evening. On Sunday the three of us went to Spitalfields Market where they sell everything, very cheaply. It was incredibly busy, hard work walking around. We then went to Pizza Hut (I had called on Saturday night and Patricia spoke to a manager who told me to go there)…

London 04/11/1989 Saturday Had no time to write! Yesterday an acquaintance of Carmen’s arrived here. Her name is Diva Francesca and she’s an opera singer. Poor Diva, used to all sorts of luxuries, ended up in this dump… What you gonna do? She must be older than 60 but she is very youthful, open and…

London 01/11/1989 Thursday My period hasn’t arrived yet… We found out that Silvio Santos has taken Aureliano Chaves’ place as candidate for president. Only in Brazil! E mole? (slang, not sure how to translate literally, but it means ‘can you believe it?’, mole means soft). Yesterday we went to view a flat – one bedroom,…