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DIGNITY (Pt. 4) | dreaming and dignity

I’m thinking about home

I’m thinking about faith

I’m thinking about work

The city is different at this hour. The office clerks and counter staff are still in their beds. The bairns are just beginning the long holidays. And the…

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DIGNITY (Pt. 3) | betty bags a booker

Dundee grandmother, Elizabeth McDade, is the surprise winner of the 2030 Booker Prize for her debut novel The Bagging Area. A tragicomic tale of robotics, redundancy and redemption, the story mines McDade’s thirty-five year experience as a cleaner at…

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HOW THE ROBIN GOT HIS RED BREAST

“Mum”, whispered Amina, “I’m so cold I can’t feel my toes any more”.   Her mum sighed, and then stopped. She peered into the trees all around them, and listened. It was quiet. “Ok, love. We’ll sleep here in this clearing… Read more

BURNING

Fala Moor is speckled just now with the gorgeous white lambswool-like tufts of bog cotton. I’ve been gathering in stuff from up there along with “Wind Resistance” director, Wils Wilson. The drying pulley in my kitchen is hung with sedges…

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the risk in being good

Oh my goodness. Robert Frost’s Exposed Nest. What a poem.

What is it to do good? What harm can come from intervention? How swiftly do we turn “to other things” and often have no measure of the consequence of…

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a palm for a blackbird’s nest

With thanks to Heather who pointed me to the legend of St Kevin And The Blackbird. Here’s the mighty Seamus Heaney reading his poem about the same … “a prayer his body makes entirely …”

There’s much in this that…

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DIGNITY (Pt. 4) | dreaming and dignity

I’m thinking about home

I’m thinking about faith

I’m thinking about work

The city is different at this hour. The office clerks and counter staff are still in their beds. The bairns are just beginning the long holidays. And the…

Read more

DIGNITY (Pt. 3) | betty bags a booker

Dundee grandmother, Elizabeth McDade, is the surprise winner of the 2030 Booker Prize for her debut novel The Bagging Area. A tragicomic tale of robotics, redundancy and redemption, the story mines McDade’s thirty-five year experience as a cleaner at…

Read more

HOW THE ROBIN GOT HIS RED BREAST

“Mum”, whispered Amina, “I’m so cold I can’t feel my toes any more”.   Her mum sighed, and then stopped. She peered into the trees all around them, and listened. It was quiet. “Ok, love. We’ll sleep here in this clearing… Read more

BURNING

Fala Moor is speckled just now with the gorgeous white lambswool-like tufts of bog cotton. I’ve been gathering in stuff from up there along with “Wind Resistance” director, Wils Wilson. The drying pulley in my kitchen is hung with sedges…

Read more

the risk in being good

Oh my goodness. Robert Frost’s Exposed Nest. What a poem.

What is it to do good? What harm can come from intervention? How swiftly do we turn “to other things” and often have no measure of the consequence of…

Read more

a palm for a blackbird’s nest

With thanks to Heather who pointed me to the legend of St Kevin And The Blackbird. Here’s the mighty Seamus Heaney reading his poem about the same … “a prayer his body makes entirely …”

There’s much in this that…

Read more

Pigeon

“Mum, I think I can talk to birds”, says my nearly nine year old son first thing this morning. “Wow. That’s cool!” I reply, “What do you say to each other?” “Well it’s kind of hard to tell you, because…

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You are all bog-born

Some notes on a walk to Fala Flow yesterday afternoon, during which I said to the moor: Please tell me about yourself. Ragged and incomplete … but a glimmer in it … something to develop.

I have room for…

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The plover loves the mountain

On the night of May 5th into May 6th 2016, when I might ordinarily have stayed up stupid late drinking red wine, watching the incoming Scottish Parliamentary election results and ranting to the world on twitter, I was, instead, happed…

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