Set off from Eóin’s about 11:30 to walk a section of the John Muir Way, said we’d meet him and the child at Smeatons for tea and scones at 2 o’clock. Surely we’d have the short distance covered by then. From the end of the High Street, we bear west along the coast the high … Continue reading John Muir’s Long Shadow
That’s it now, the gentleness of the old season has gone, the weak arm of autumn that had been holding a slack, frayed rope to summer’s end has lost its strength, snapped, and a new rope has been attached firmly to winter. The new rope is tightening, it is pulling winter towards us, or the … Continue reading The Sea, The Sea
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
Five years I’ve lived here, and this is my first visit to the Mansfield Traquair Centre. The former Catholic Apostolic Church closed its doors to a dwindling congregation when the last priest died in 1958. After that, the building had other short-lived reinventions, but its decrepitude had begun. A slow decay of fading and peeling, … Continue reading Mrs. Traquair
I didn’t know burial grounds were so full of life. Cemeteries filled with crumbling stones dating back one hundred, two hundred years, hidden and forgotten places known only by lonely dog walkers, head-dwellers, and retirees, places like Warriston Cemetery where the dead sleep while new growth teems with life. My friend took me there earlier … Continue reading Warriston Cemetery
From Perth, Australia, came the message that she could not countenance, these days, reading anything that was not beautiful. She is right. Why, by choice, should we read about ugliness of action, deed, character, when all that is so readily available in our daily newsfeeds? Why shouldn’t we self-select and sanitise what we choose to … Continue reading The Sunny Side of Life
“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.” Isn’t that a lovely line? It’s from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It makes me think about reframing awful things in a different way. Maybe this (insert whatever your trouble is) isn’t so bad after all. And if to reframe … Continue reading The Sunset of Dissolution
Do you ever see beauty in something that is not conventionally beautiful?
Lately, there has been a proliferation of books, manuals, advice, studies, pamphlets and courses all about breathing. Wouldn’t you wonder what we need to be told about what comes so naturally? Why do we need refresher lessons on filling one’s lungs and reminding as to the advantages of moving air in and out through the … Continue reading Corsets Should Not be Worn
I love a bargain, and (confession/judgement alert) I cannot understand anyone who doesn’t. You know the sort of people who are embarrassed about buying supermarket food that has been marked down after 5 o’clock, or they run the other way when you start haggling at the fish market, or they won’t buy an old book … Continue reading Amaryllis, Amaryllis
My Edinburgh Press 