Last weekend I went to see Scottish Ballet’s 50th anniversary performance of ‘Spring!’ (billed with an exclamation mark). Ever since, I have been fixated with and thinking about the human body. I’m doing it now: sitting in the window seat of a café watching a woman walk past carrying three striped hula hoops: yup, she’s shaped … Continue reading Bend, Bounce, Bound
I heard the phrase a few years ago when a young student sidled up to my husband at an event we were attending, stretched out his arm and offered his hand, saying, ‘I am so pleased to meet you, I have had a brain crush on you for years.’ What does one say in such … Continue reading Brain Crush
Wasn’t it awful watching television footage of Notre Dame Cathedral burning furiously earlier this week? That it is a monument so ancient, recognisable, and steadfast made it all the more shocking. It stirred a deep unease in my heart, its partial destruction acting as a powerful reminder about what is precious yet precarious: everything. I was reminded … Continue reading Tumbling Down
We walked through hail on the Cheviots, those rolling hills that straddle the border between England and Scotland. I was on the southern side, in Northumberland, when big, fat balls of hail began to prick my cheeks like tiny needles. Starting out, it was sunny and cold with no sign of hail as we trudged … Continue reading Cheviots
Setting off backwards, with a view to the west from my seat on the train, the sun is so bright that it hurts my eyes. A storm is forecast, it should be here by now. The weather is running late. Rabbits are frozen like ornaments in a scrap of scrubby field alongside a stream. The stream … Continue reading Journey
In Edinburgh, we have gained 50 seconds more light today compared with yesterday. Tomorrow, a further 58 seconds will be added to the bag, over a minute the following day, and by New Year’s Eve we’ll have a whole six minutes more of daylight than we had on the shortest day a week ago. Not … Continue reading Tender Is The Night
Around the corner from where I live is a dentist’s surgery. Once a week, an A-frame board appears on the street outside announcing: ‘Dermabrasion clinic for fillers, lip plumping, smoothing of fine lines and crow’s feet.’ We all know, thanks to Philip Larkin, that the age of debauchery was born with the invention of sex in … Continue reading Crow’s Feet
Last Wednesday was a wet one in Edinburgh. The five o’clock downpour came just in time to drench people coming home from work. I’d been inside all day and was itching to get out - time for a mental health walk. By eight o’clock, the rain was diffident, apologetic, like that rare embarrassed drunk who knows … Continue reading All Creatures Great and Small
Back in Edinburgh, I know someone who is partial to a little sculptural clipping in his garden. You know the sort of thing: clipping the privet into gently undulating waves, softening the usual straight lines and sharp angles of hedges and herbaceous borders. When I lived in York, in the North of England, the university … Continue reading Mother Earth
One swallow doesn't make a summer, that’s what they say. I saw my first last night. A single swallow, swoop low in the field beside me as I drove slowly along a mid-Ulster laneway in the mizzle. Despite it being so damp, there was a brightness in the sky; maybe it felt brighter to me … Continue reading The World Comes To Life
