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
Nine balls I found; lurking under hedges, behind the shed, deep under the straggly hydrangea, wedged by the oil tank, away up in the corner where the first of the rhubarb is waking. They hadn’t been breeding, I know this because they are all of a different species: a medicine ball – the oversized one … Continue reading Balls
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
According to an Ipsos-MORI poll, a large majority of people (79%) think that there is more swearing on television now than ten years ago. And here’s another poll-generated statistic: only 55% of people trust civil servants to tell the truth. I generally skim over such statistics, for, when I read claims about the pulse of … Continue reading Avert Your Eyes
‘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
Auden, Barrett-Browning, Cope, Dickinson, Eliot, Frost, Gallagher, Heaney, Ibsen, Jamie, Kinnell, Larkin, Mahon, Neruda, Owen, Plath, Qabbani, Rossetti, St Vincent Millay, Thomas, Updike, Vaughan, Wordsworth, Xenokleides, Yeats, Zephaniah. Who is your favourite? Feel free to reach beyond the 26 I’ve offered you; I was just playing the alphabet game, and, in doing so, left out … Continue reading Advent
It’s oft quoted, and it sounds like it might be from the Bible, or from Shakespeare, but the attribution for recording to print that 'the darkest hour is just before the dawn' falls to the English theologian and historian, Thomas Fuller. He wrote it in 1650, in language that is somewhat more archaic than what … Continue reading The Darkest Hour
Is it just me, or did you wake up this morning wondering what day it was? All this snow disruption: days off work, shops shut, no public transport, schools closed, snow day bleeding into snow day. It is confusing and disorientating. After the initial excitement over loads of white stuff falling from the sky in … Continue reading What Day Is It?
“Of course you can stay, come on over.” The exodus had begun. Edinburgh was on shutdown as offices emptied out early in an attempt to get their workers home before 3pm when all public transport would grind to a halt. E. and S. had missed the last train out to East Lothian. A plan was … Continue reading Clunk
It’s snowing outside. It wasn’t falling when I woke up, but there is light feathery confetti coming down now. I feel relieved. Like a child who has been told too early about Christmas and then keeps asking when Santa is coming, I felt we were told too early about the snow and the time delay … Continue reading Blanket
