Thirty Things Update

We are going away tomorrow. For a whole week of blissful time-out and thankfully, also some blistering sunshine. Lord knows monsoon season in Scotland hasn’t provided us enough Vitamin D this year. So before we leave, I thought it was time for a check-up. How am I getting on with my Thirty Things? One Visit … Continue reading

The Clandestine Bibliophile

There is a stealth artist in our midst. The Batman of bookart has been gallivanting about town for months, leaving precious sculptures with inscribed messages for the literary community. First there was Scottish Poetry Library – a poetree stashed among the shelves. The National Library displays theirs in the entrance, a badge of honor. Then … Continue reading

Edinburgh’s Festivals

My town in pretty famous. It has this thing in the summer where hundreds of people, some of them famous, come and put on shows. We are awash with talent (and, admittedly, a lot of un-talented deluded people). It’s crazy, messy, chaotic, art-tastic fun. It is also really hard to live your normal life through. … Continue reading

Jennie, I’ve got your number

When I was little, I thought I knew how to count. The numbers went 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  6  7  5  3  0  9. I was a child of the eighties. And a small enough child I didn’t know Tommy Tutone was singing about a phone number. Sigh, such innocence. (Incidentally, … Continue reading

Nostalgic Nosh

It’s an old cliché that you are what you eat. In my case, I eat what I am. If you wanted to take the temperature of any given day in my life, you could do much worse than observe my food habits. Whatever I’m putting in my mouth is probably directly correlated to how I … Continue reading

Thirty Things

In all probability, I will live forever. The women in my family are made of some rare mixture. They lived into their 90s even in the 18th & 19th Cs. Back when people died of colds. When there were no antibiotics. When one in five women could die in childbirth. When the estimated average life … Continue reading

On Your Marks

I am getting ready to be 30. Which is lame and uninteresting to the naked eye, I grant you. But I, in my extremely eccentric version of wisdom, have decided it is actually quite special. I am going to make it special. By doing 2 things, which I’ll tell you about later. In the meantimes … Continue reading