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
Is your cherry blossom out yet? Is the bloom pink or white? Maybe yours has even come and gone. In Edinburgh, it is a little late this year. A few have burst forth; delicate, pale pink confetti, the thinnest scraps of tracing paper, anxiously clinging on as the spring winds push through. Many have yet … Continue reading Fleeting
I like to bake. They say, nowadays, that commercial flour is so fine that there’s no longer any need to sift it like we were taught to do. Nonetheless, I sift on. I like the ritual of sifting. Watching the tiny, milled particles separate and drift, being left with a fine dusting on the work … Continue reading Sifting
After a bit of a delay – a week later than I had planned – I’m back in Edinburgh. “You’ll see a big difference with the stretch in the days,” A. told me. “Sure the days have stretched where I was too,” I reminded her. “I know that,” she answered, “but you’ll still feel it … Continue reading Higher
In the morning I’ve taken to lying in the dark for a while before I get up. I listen to the birds outside and try to decipher what they have to tell me about the day ahead. “Stay in bed, it’s freezing out here,” is what I’ve been hearing a lot of lately. I’m using … Continue reading Winged Messengers
