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
I think about you often, not as a continuum, not as a timeline, but as something whole, rounded, and intact, a ready-made container within which is everything I require for my life. I think of you as an old-fashioned trunk, one that might have accompanied someone on a passage to India a hundred years ago. … Continue reading Monologue with Life
November gallops. The first fourteen days pass in what feels like a week and the next fourteen last for around five days and then the month is almost spent. Today is the last penny in the purse. It’s the darkest month too. I know that on paper December is darker, but December disguises itself with … Continue reading My November Guest
For a few days, it seemed too good to be true: all that heat at the end of March, the sun spilling fool’s gold. It was true though, however, it was too good to last – at this time of the year anyway. I don’t mind the change back to chill. I don’t mind that spring feels … Continue reading Light, Chill and Yellow
Small consolations. That’s what the last year has been full of. We are told to observe them, to remember that life is made up of them, a series of tiny moments, most of which we dismiss as inconsequential. Yet the more we take notice of the small consolations, the more apparent it is that they … Continue reading A Year of Consolation
The light is coming!
We start to lose the light this time of year and the sun moves back towards the bridges. Every evening as I watch it set from Calton Hill the sun creeps closer to the whale bone rib cage cable stays of the Queensferry Crossing. The runner beans in the backgreen have stopped searching for whatever … Continue reading This Time of Year
I fear the whispering wind and the messages it brings me. It loosens worries from my head in unnerving gusts. I fear the whispers will become raised voices, shouts, screams of terror that pull waves from the ocean floor, rip slates from roofs, and send gulls spinning and shrieking and competing with plastic bags that … Continue reading The Whispering Wind
December seems to be a month crammed with responsibility and obligation, assignments and commitments causing us to accelerate as we approach year end. This runs contrary to instinct, which would have us slow down, recline into the depths of the year and let ourselves ape nature in coming to rest like the dried-out teasel heads … Continue reading Stillness
I stood on the edge of a carpet of decaying roses in the middle of July of this year, which was, I think, around six weeks after they had been laid down. What amazed me was how long the flowers were lasting; that is to say, how they were still offering something to be enjoyed … Continue reading Decay
My Edinburgh Press 