Merry melancholy. I’m shamelessly stealing these two words from a writer friend who sent me a message earlier in the week, and this is how she signed off. How right she is about the discordant juxtaposition of sadness and joy at Christmas and New Year. In another message, someone else put to me this way: … Continue reading Merry Melancholy
It’s coming on Christmas. The days have crossed themselves off the calendar, and here we stand at the year’s tipping point of light into darkness into light. ’Tis the season for enfolding, being quiet, doing less. Instead though, the season demands a deluge of doing, much of which is enormous fun – should one have … Continue reading It’s Coming On Christmas
I wonder how many people are doing it, sending photos of the temperature gauge inside their house, snaps of thermometers plummeting to single digits, sharing images of themselves on their laptop wearing fingerless gloves and bobble hats, swaddled like a dead Viking about to be pushed out to sea. For some it’s an act of … Continue reading Cold
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
I came away thinking: how can I convey in words what I have just heard? For someone who’s not been here, how can I describe it to them? If felt impossible to recreate that sound in writing. I’ll try. St Giles’ Cathedral, just after dusk. A short concert of choral music, a programme entitled Glimmering Light. … Continue reading Glimmering Light
While helping clean her room, I slide any change I find lying on the floor into my hip pocket. I admit to swiping it, fringe benefits, I say. The next morning, I return it to her (it hadn’t amounted to much) to make up her bus fare. I tell her about searching for coins down … Continue reading Every Penny
At times I feel overwhelmed by all there is to do in a life, the surplus weight of life’s administration and bureaucracy and responsibility, all those things we’d all love to jettison. I take a moment to consider what could be simplified or scrubbed from the list entirely: passport renewal, new tariff for my broadband, … Continue reading The Weight of Life
I spent last week in the Highlands, in retreat, writing. It misted, it rained, it blew, and on the last night, the elements fell still, the sky cleared, and we adjourned to the straw bale studio to read our work aloud, to uncork wine and stay up late. On the short walk back to the … Continue reading The Old Lady Who Put the Stars in the Sky
Earlier this year, one of my sisters-in-law told me she’d begun to avoid doing anything where she might run the risk of falling. “Can’t afford it, not now I’m older,” she said. “I used to be built from stoneware pottery, now I chip and crack as easily as biscuit porcelain and it’s more difficult to … Continue reading Glue or Rivets
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
My Edinburgh Press 