I grew up in North London, with a love of rock n roll and motorbikes. I trained and worked as a Montessori teacher and as a support assistant to children with special needs. I studied various aspects of esotericism, art and different forms of dance, which led me to Capoeira (the Brazilian martial art / dance), which eventually brought me here -realising the feeling I’d always had that somewhere, somehow, there was a life waiting for me that looked nothing like the one I was living.
Prainha do Canto Verde is a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Brazil. I first came here on a capoeira workshop with the school I trained with in London, I believed it to be nothing more than a grand adventure. I brought my children, I packed lightly, wasn’t looking for a relationship and had absolutely no intention of staying. Then I met Neu.
Neu, a fisherman native to Prainha, was kind and gentle but it didn’t occur to me that he, fifteen years my junior, wanted a relationship with me. I finally realised he did.
That was over twenty years ago.
My children have grown up bilingual and, now with lives of their own, are rooted in both English and Brazilian culture. Our journey hasn’t always been easy, Neu’s serious illness has tested us both, but we’re still together and still in Prainha.
Nowhere stands still and I have watched Prainha change in ways both good and bad. I have learned to navigate a life lived between two cultures, two languages, and two very different ways of understanding the world. I have planted a garden, a small forest and take daily walks across the dunes, meeting only donkeys, horses, cows and occasionally some wilder animal life. Here I’ve had the freedom to indulge my creativity and develop as an artist.
This site is where I bring it all together, the paintings, the photographs, the stories of daily life in a village that most travel brochures never mention. The posts are short and written in both English and Portuguese, because this life belongs to both languages equally.
I write for anyone who has ever wondered what it might be like to do something completely unexpected with their own life. Also for someone who loves me and reads every word from her home in England, her adventurous spirit travels with me everywhere I go.
Welcome to my world. It might surprise you!
I have been writing about life in Prainha since 2008 —