2019 year review

 

I wrote no newsletter last year as what was happening was hard to bear, impossible to share

It’s taken another year’s reflection to process and begin to understand: I was short of the words, disorders, understanding and of the knowledge…………

Home is now me, one old cat, one new pup

Alan left a year […]

Rain falls softly on the newly dug earth

This episode took soooo much effort to publish as it was hard to write and sad to re-read. Every story has to have an ending though, or does it?

Read on, right through the end:

Rain falls softly on the newly-dug earth

This was the hardest of Tiddler’s’ tales to write. You may have sensed […]

Malaga, in search of winter sun 2

view of old town Granada

The Alhambra from the old moorish walls of the Albaicin

Malaga’s bus station is the size of Buchanan Street’s in Glasgow and as busy. Their cakes are bus station quality: look nicer than than they taste. The café con lêche however was welcome and my bus departed on time. People seemed to just […]

Malaga: in search of winter sun 1

orange tree and church

Ice gathers as we head north

I am gazing out of a Boeing 737 window, punctuated with ice crystals, gazing over the clouds which the sun is highlighting, aware from the sun’s angle that setting point will soon be reached. Yes we are literally flying into the sunset. I feel such a sense […]

Sunrise salutations

The unexpected delights of the moment

At this time of peak darkness as we move towards the Winter solstice, I came cross this poem I had written about dark times and moving to working with the light. Some years ago, as part of attuning myself to the natural world I did daily sun […]

rhythm, rhyme and reason

I love to write. It drives me mad at times: my dyslexia gets in the way and the letters muddle furiously, words interchange and confuse me. Yesterday I was through Glasgow Central station and read ‘Changing toilets, inaccessible places’

No, it wasn’t mean to be read like that, my brain was running away with words […]

a splutter of sparrows

Speugs

You fall like clouds for you are many,

you rise like dustbowls offered to the wind.

 

Dawn fills with your eager chatty clatter,

bringing to the world your scores of weans.

 

They beg with open mouths and shimmering wingtips,

shadow their fathers to a source of seed.

 

And as the feeder […]

An affection for Hiort

poetry
poetry
An affection for Hiort
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Coming home to deep peace

I was fortunate enough to make a trip out to the distant islands of the St. Kilda group this month, 80km west of the Outer Hebrides. Its long been a goal for me. It felt like a gentle homecoming, even if the sea was not so gentle!

To […]

On acts of love

love flourishes in the harshest spaces

Its hard to get out of the rut that politics and national emotions polarise.Yet some things matter more: the smile of a child, the purr of a companion cat, the sweet scent of mock orange blossom mingling with roses. The taste of this year’s first raspberries is […]

Hope is working – towards wellness

Can you spot the non-petals?

In Weston, our little home hideaway, we have a strong interest in mental wellness and sharing skills to allow others to become more themselves if they will allow it.

Alan was teaching his WRAP courses (wellness recovery action plan) and asked me to write a response in […]