I My section of the Union Canal has been refilled. It had been drained away almost to nothing so its embankments could be exposed and studied by maintenance engineers for…
Donne, I suppose, was such another Who found no substitute for sense, To seize and clutch and penetrate; Expert beyond experience… T S Eliot, in ‘Whispers of immortality’, paid tribute…
When descending to Edinburgh airport over the Firth of Forth, you may have noticed to the right of the flightpath an uninhabited island, connected by a causeway at low tide…
A telephone is ringing in the darkness and snatches of conversation can be heard: ‘same slate’, ‘still running’, ‘cut-throat’… ‘Okay, Rick, whatâs the game?’ ‘Cut-throat’ ‘Whatâs the object of it?’…
This is the season when the leaves fall from the trees, a season I used to love above all the others, but which now tends to bring melancholy reflections on…
As I stood stock still in the icy silence of the remembrance ceremony at the village War Memorial, very little seemed to make sense. ‘This is as close as it…
We all have memories of Christmas past. For me, the childhood excitement of waking to find presents at the foot of my bed, a reward perhaps for enduring the tedium…
I hadn’t seen John for almost 40 years. He had made a new life for himself in Australia but was back in the UK for a few weeks to catch…
The origin of the term ‘epidemic’ is attributed to Hippocrates in about 400BCE. It was the title of one of the books attributed to him which described the occurrence of…
Richard Kerley chaired a committee in 2000 set up by the Labour-run Scottish Executive to report on ‘renewing local democracy’. The resulting report and recommendations allowed the Scottish Executive to…