Last weekend I visited the brilliant Tartan exhibition at the V&A, Dundee. On their website (https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/whatson/exhibitions/tartan), it is described thus: “Tartan celebrates the global story of a unique pattern - how the rules of the grid have inspired creativity from the everyday to the sublime. The instantly recognisable symbol of Scotland, a global textile of tradition, rebellion, oppression … Continue reading Kilty Kilty Cold Bum
Yellow flags and banners, printed in black, with simple, short messages, dripping slightly now with the mizzle that came with the dawn. Many arrived with the early morning street sweepers, the old guard, he knows most of them. There is Polly, with the cropped hair, talking to the media. Safe pair of hands, she’d not … Continue reading Freedom and Democracy
Death is ugly. Death is final. Death is cruel. Death is precious. Death is beautiful. Death has a silver lining. There is a stillness that settles inside you when the worst thing happens, when death arrives to your world. No one mentions it, at least I have never heard it mentioned, this place of internal … Continue reading The Thaw
Cormac joined us in my bedroom. Was he crying too? Each person who was there probably has a different memory of the sequence, the words, the pain. It doesn’t require many words to relay the news of someone’s death. The ‘norm’ is for an unexpected death to occur on another ‘ordinary’ day – for it … Continue reading Holding Your Hand
In the New Year of 2016, I counted the days between my visits home to see Dad. Each trip home I watched Dad’s eyes brighten and become bluer as his frame shrank and his energy depleted. I felt guilty that there was a long break of seventeen days coming up when Ken and I had … Continue reading Faint, Fainter, Fainter Still
On 20th September 2015, I wrote in my diary: “Dad sounds, not mixed up, but, like he is waiting for his brain to catch up with his mind.” What we were not yet calling Motor Neurone Disease (out loud) was making him quieter and less ebullient, but with a sharp focus still on family. By the end … Continue reading Family, Laughter, Music, Poetry, Love
“As the hinge of memory rusted in willed self-preserving neglect, she decided it was easier to remember only what she had negotiated with herself to remember.” Kenneth Bush Memories can be painful. But I instinctively knew that, for me, it was better to feel the pain than to lose the memories, than to forget. I write … Continue reading Master of my Fate
I couldn’t tell you how I know the Harold Lloyd theme tune (dodo-do-do-do-do-doo-do-do-do), but I do. There may have been old repeats on television when I was a child, because I have known the catchy tune since I was small, “A pair of glasses and a smile.” You’ll find lots of clips on the internet; try … Continue reading Hooray for Harold Lloyd
Other women have told me that they don’t like match day, they take themselves off for the afternoon or evening, or they adjourn to the back to the flat to block it all out. I like it; I find the unruliness enlivening rather than unsettling. Before I look out the window, I can feel the … Continue reading Match Day
“The man to whom little is not enough will not benefit from more.” Saint Columbanus. A Saint Patrick’s Day message from the other one. A dozen-and-one wise words on our insatiable appetite for more. When I was a child, or even a young adult, or even a middle-aged woman, I used to marvel at the … Continue reading More
My Edinburgh Press 