I’d heard about this wonderful wee festival that happens at the Highland Folk Museum every August – all about wood – but never made it along before (usually because it’s Edinburgh Festival season). But this year, I was lucky enough to have Forest Fest in my programme of activities for the Shared Stories: A Year […]
At the start of this year, I decided to embrace my term as Writer in Residence for the Cairngorms National Park as a kind of pilgrimage. Certainly, I would be covering a lot of ground delivering the project, and that has proved true, and fascinating. More significantly, I knew I would be on a personal […]
Losing my wallet was the last straw. The final sign, if any were needed, that what I was really losing was my marbles. It was the climax of a catalogue of cock-ups and memory lapses, of a comedy of errors that had been playing out for several weeks, but long since stopped being funny. I’d […]
As loyal readers of Writing the Way, I thought you might enjoy this recent article by Roger Cox, Arts & Books Editor of the Scotsman Newspaper. It is copyright of The Scotsman Publications and is being used with their kind permission. All images, unless otherwise stated, are my own. Forget haiku – Cairngorm Mountains inspire […]
Namaste! Most of you probably recognise the word, some of you use it in yoga classes and some may even know what it means. Pronounced num–ah-steh it is the commonest greeting across the Hindu world, usually with palms pressed together, and serves as both hello and goodbye. It’s been part of my vocabulary from childhood […]
One of my great hopes for this year as Writer in Residence at the Cairngorms National Park was to dedicate more time to my poetry. What time? What poetry? Maybe I was the only person surprised to discover that the role (and writing about it in this blog and other publications) has kept me so […]
Staff away days can be notorious for press-ganging resistant folk through ‘team-building’ exercises like tying Betty from accounts to intern Joey’s back and asking them to leap-frog across the Director in a muddy ditch. Or, just when they’re all filthy and furious, getting them to role-play conflict resolution while onlookers keep score. You might have […]
Of all the bird books and field guides lying around my house, the one that is most precious is not an heirloom, or expensive, or even the most comprehensive. It’s the one that was given to me by my friend, the wildlife guide and passionate birder, Mark Denman. The book is dotted with his notes […]
It is the beginning of April and, here in the Cairngorms, the beginning of lambing. Everyone up here knows about the notorious ‘lambing snows’: that no matter how lovely the weather before-hand, the moment the next generation of sheep start to emerge, skinny and vulnerable, the snow will return. In my research for my second […]
When I arrive at Speyside High School the welcome from Lesley Williamson, Head of English is warm, though a little surprised. She confesses with a giggle that they’d somehow got me down as Mervyn and were expecting a man. And a beard. I apologise for any disappointment and acknowledge I have an unusual name and […]