A late June night. I’d picked her up from the tram, and we were driving back along York Place. From there, we drove down Leith Walk, briefly passing through Haddington Place, before we turned onto Montgomery Street. She lifted her hand, an involuntary action, she didn't seem to know she was doing it, and pressed … Continue reading Absence
Blowing things out of all proportion and adopting the out-of-balance perspective – haven’t we all had our fair share of practice at it? I went to get into my car the other day and noticed a ding at the rear right hand side, just above the reverse light. Bodywork dented and scraped, paint gouged and … Continue reading Dust
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
I’m reading a book on loan to me. S. brought it back from a trip to Australia earlier this year. ‘Any Ordinary Day’ is by Leigh Sales. It’s a collection of stories about the very worst things people can experience that rise up, out of the blue. The title is important; they are stories of … Continue reading Any Ordinary Day
I’m just back from a few days in Ireland, of the Northern variety. There was much talk of uncertainty. T. spoke about her father’s farm, the far fields of which run along the seam of the border. “There’s more talk of Brexit than there are cups of tea taken, and that’s saying something,” she told me. … Continue reading Brace Ourselves For Change
In the west of Scotland there’s a tiny island, south of Oban, called Easdale where there are no cars, no roads, no street lamps and about sixty inhabitants. It’s nestled between the Isle of Mull and the mainland, making it feel soft and sheltered, or perhaps that was just the luck of my visit to … Continue reading Simplicity
It was either Elsa or Anna (I should know which) who implored us to, ‘Let it go’, as she belted her message out, Disney style. And why not take advice from a cartoon character when the conventional leadership and global governance of the day plays out like a poorly scripted soap opera? We may take … Continue reading The Year Is Going, Let Him Go
‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it can only be lived forwards.’ These are the words of Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, theologian and poet. I was at a conference last week where one of the speakers, from Denmark, drew extensively from the work of Kierkegaard. When he told us he was going to delve … Continue reading Young and Old
“What do you do?” It’s one of the go-to questions, asked when meeting someone for the first time in order to find out about their work. We ask it to discover who they are, what makes them tick, what their significance in the world is. For occupation, it seems - erroneously or otherwise - is linked … Continue reading Legacy
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
