For me, it’s the red joggers. I bought a pair in August, when I returned to Edinburgh after five months in Oxford for lockdown 1.0. They were Marks and Spencers, brushed cotton inside, extra long. After a week, I bought a second pair. Soon I was wearing them all the Read more…
A year into lockdown, we hear of people reporting digital exhaustion of a kind that goes beyond fatigue. They describe finding it hard to look at faces on the screen, or feeling the urge to sit on the floor rather than a chair. Some struggle to sit still, or get Read more…
People tell me that this third lockdown has been the worst. Even though it’s spring, and even though we’re getting vaccinated, and even though there are dates for unlocking, we are worn down. At a certain point, the knowledge that things are moving just feels abstract. We’ve heard this before, Read more…
In the early months of 2020, we waited to see if coronavirus would get to Britain. Surely not, we thought. Then lockdown came, and we waited for it to end, a few weeks, maybe, and then everything would go back to normal. We made plans, accordingly: we moved in with Read more…
I heard the birds first. The snow was still thick on the ground, the early snowdrops covered; my boots were slippery on the ice, and my hands chapped in my pockets; there were snowmen on the Meadows, and the sky glowed at night. But then, one morning, the birds: chirping, Read more…
A few days ago, Ben the collie suffered a violent interruption of normal gastrointestinal duties. Because he is a collie, he seemed none the worse for a few days – running, demanding his ball – except that he wouldn’t eat. He was ok, until suddenly he wasn’t: limp, unresponsive, collapsed. Read more…
The crisp tingle in the nostrils, so pure it almost hurts. A smoky tea to keep you company for long hours at your computer. Thyme in the community garden on the Meadows. The lingering coconut butteriness of the yellow gorse in Holyrood. The scent of a candle in the rain. Read more…
We awake to a delicate white fog. Across Edinburgh buildings are opaque, the air wet, the city enthralled. The filmy presence calls for quiet. The trees on the Meadows are stark and solemn; Blackford Hill is nowhere to be seen. The whoosh of cars and buses down the street sounds Read more…
Your inbox is full of emails. All the emails contain links. You are supposed to follow the links, which will take you to webpages. You have to read, and sometimes watch, the webpages. There is stuff in them that you are meant to know. There is even some stuff that Read more…
Over Christmas, my books piled high, and on a theme. There was Katherine May’s Wintering, a New York Times bestseller, about the power of rest and retreat in difficult times; the Chronicles of Narnia, beginning with an endless winter; and James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life. As the Meadows disappeared beneath the snow, I Read more…