XI. Holyrood Park Freedom reigns in Holyrood behind the Queen’s big house. Wide-open space, grass to roam barefoot, feed ducks, kick balls. A woman in a leotard – small waist, wide hips – attempts to wheel a hula-hoop along her arm across her clavicle and back along the other arm. Every time, she fails. I … Continue reading Holyrood Park, Arthur’s Seat
I slipped off to Clifden to find the west is not only awake, it is burnished in gold. Deep into autumn and a summer’s day emerges so warm and still that my swim across Dog’s Bay feels semi-tropical. Our host is pleased we are seeing the west well dressed and prettily turned-out. No, I am … Continue reading The West’s Awake
VIII. Easter Road My stomping ground is Easter Road, a place of withered leaves, stubbed butts, strewn rubbish, and the same squat bulldog lamp post tethered while his master buys a macaroni pie. A bookie’s, two booze shops, three options for tattoos, and a bakery with sourdough for £6 – can’t see that lasting, not … Continue reading Easter Road, Abbeymount, Meadowbank
VI. Royal Terrace Some habits punctuate my days, like sunset walks to Calton Hill with robin, rat and wren. I’ve met them all, housed happily in hawthorn hedge, that neat-clipped edge to Royal Terrace with its high and haughty ‘cannot-help-it’ tinge. Enough to say, I saw a couple dancing there beneath a crystal chandelier. A … Continue reading Royal Terrace, Calton Hill
III. Bonaly The wind is up on my drive to Bonaly past cherry tree trunk soldiers lining Redford Barracks. Fallen leaves St Vitus’ dance in the gutter. At Colinton, I turn towards the hills and take a narrow, pitted road down bumps and bracken-broken verges. Slower now, a herd of alpacas graze the Pentlands’ sheltered … Continue reading Bonaly, Capelaw Hill, Willowbrae
This time two years ago, September 2020, we were deep in the throes of the Covid pandemic, mired in lockdowns and uncertainty. A vaccine was on its way, that much we knew, but we didn’t know when it would be administered, if it would work, or how much of a winter of isolation lay ahead. … Continue reading Once Upon a Time in Edinburgh
I have this silly habit of turning to the end of a novel to read the acknowledgements before I’ve even started reading the first chapter. Don’t know why I do it; I think perhaps it humanises the author for me, places them in the context of their family and friends. I wonder how a friend … Continue reading To All My Neglected Friends
Awake too early. Body has not yet completed its knitting back together, the overnight update is incomplete, interrupted midway. Half-installed is as bad as nothing having been installed at all. If I do not fall back to sleep, I shall be dysfunctional the day long. Program corrupted. I lay the palm of one hand upon … Continue reading Awake Too Early
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beats and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, friend hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.” Ulysses, James Joyce. When … Continue reading One About Eating
Farewell morning. Group photos at the front of the house, standing by the potted geraniums on the steps behind the buxom dahlias (flowers that are never knowingly under-dressed). Barb and I are dressed to match the flowers. I’m wearing a geometric print red dress, she’s in a botanical-printed short-legged jumpsuit. ‘When it’s short like this … Continue reading Scoosh In
My Edinburgh Press 