I am listening, over one week, to an abridged version of the Roy Foster book, On Seamus Heaney. Adrian Dunbar is reading. Cashmere blanket voice. I could listen to him read my home insurance policy and still feel comforted. Commitment, that’s what’s coming through in this morning’s section, that Heaney was a committed grafter: drafting, crafting, … Continue reading Heaney Healing
Look at her, sitting there at her desk in the glow of the screen not noticing the daylight fading. She loves that desk. It will soon be one year old. One year to her. It is much older than that. The day she bought it was a good day: car passed its MOT, she drove … Continue reading Look at Her
‘Hello, how are you?’ And then she called me by my name. This was a few weeks ago, a night when the temperature had dropped precipitously, providing perfect conditions for the snow that would lie thick during the week. It was Monday and I had nipped out on foot to Meadowbank Shopping centre, a ten-minute … Continue reading IRL
Being in the now, immersed in the moment, rooted in present time is said to be the best thing for us, because when we are in the present moment we cannot think about what has happened or what is to come; life is more immediate and almost certainly easier to navigate. I find it a … Continue reading Here and Now
Yesterday, my friend and I walked the land around Ireland’s oldest linen fabric mill, Clarks of Upperlands, in Mid-Ulster. A section of it is still working after 300 years, but much of it is disused and abandoned, but for a few dog walkers, quiet explorers like ourselves, and more than the odd ghost. We walked … Continue reading Strolling With Ghosts
My favourite time of the day has come to be the evening. A fluttering restlessness builds within me and I have to leave the house, take a walk out. Lately I’ve been scheduling my walk to get to my destination on high in time to see the sunset sky burn, then I watch it turn … Continue reading Let Evening Come
I live in a tenement and I am surrounded by people, often just a few feet away, but they are unseen and mostly unheard behind thick walls – so near and yet so far. They are above and below me, and on both sides of me, and I am reminded that we are all together … Continue reading So Near Yet So Far
I wish it wasn’t true, but there is no teacher like adversity. And the lessons that come from sudden calamity are often the ones that teach us the most. The learning is far from over, because our shadowy visitor hasn’t just dropped in for the weekend, it has yet more to impart. It is not … Continue reading The Calamity Lesson
Social isolation – no difference there then! C. said that to me last month when we were teetering on the edge of the lockdown and we laughed in mutual understanding, each of us paid up members of the Loner’s Club; that not so exclusive band of members who spend too much of the week hanging … Continue reading Few and Simple Pleasures
Having been alerted to my own haphazard use of the full stop I now see it abused everywhere. There is one particular book I am reading. In this book it is placed most unconventionally. Places where you wouldn’t expect. Everywhere. Are full stops. Littered with profligacy. Strewn. Thoughtlessly. Needless to say, it’s driving me mad, … Continue reading You Never Learn To Do It
My Edinburgh Press 