Those who live in an Edinburgh tenement, like me, will have experience of the shared responsibility for maintaining ‘the stair’. I think I may have written about it before. It’s the common stairwell that leads - in my tenement - into eleven different flats: two in the basement, and three on each of the first, … Continue reading First World Problems
Sensory overload, information overload, news overload, work overload, people overload. What about, ‘thinking overload’? What about those same old, tired thoughts that, if you are anything like me, are heavy to lift and wearing to carry around? I’m going away from the weekend and I have to pack within a 10-kilo weight limit. Easy for most, but … Continue reading Being Human
His voice is the first thing I hear when I walk into the shop. “Mina.” He is calling to her down a book-lined corridor to the back room where volunteers are sorting through bags of donations. “Those shoes I bought here before Christmas – remember? The size thirteens? I nearly didn't take them. Haven’t they’ve turned out … Continue reading Glass Half Full
I opened an old journal the other day and out fell a dried, pressed leaf, small and red; so dry that the edges crumbled when I handled it. I studied the entry dates of the journal to find a clue as to the provenance of the leaf, perhaps I’d picked it up in Canada. I … Continue reading Nurture Your Quirks
He had a coffee; I had Earl Grey. His was frothy and a bit cold, he told me; mine was too hot, so I blew on it, not that it made a whit of difference. “From England? You’re walking the whole way from the North of England to Santiago?” “Yes. The one in Spain, … Continue reading There’s a Hole in my Bucket
I am of the generation where we ‘backed’ our books at the start of each new school year. Dog-eared and a bit tattered from use the year before (in fact, use over multiple years), a growing pile would be distributed by the teacher in September, leaning like the Tower of Pisa, in preparation for ten … Continue reading Change
Resilience: it has come to be one of those buzz words, a quality we seek to embody for ourselves, our children, our towns, our communities. It is that ability to withstand life’s scouring pad and boiling water, to emerge shiny, free from scrape or scald. Possessing the means to bounce back when the bowling ball … Continue reading Resilience
“When we lose that sense of the possible, we lose it fast.” Joan Didion, Blue Nights. I understand what she’s saying. For me it’s like the tide coming in on a sandcastle: one minute it is standing firm and the next its foundations have been eaten away and down it goes in one a lurching collapse. … Continue reading Possibility
The Henry Girls is the name of a band comprised of three talented sisters from the village of Culdaff in County Donegal, one of whom I shared a house with in Belfast in the nineties. Curiously, they are not Henry girls at all, but McLaughlin girls. However, there is such a proliferation of McLaughlin’s in … Continue reading How Do You Know?
