“Midwinter and all dulled but the wind and the stars. The dead of the dark winter; stretching behind me the dim patch of silent days alone. The wind is a […]

The wind is dry ice, the sky is pewter-grey and heavily pregnant with unborn snow. The dusk thickens too fast amid the old drifts that patch the hillside. There is […]

With the 500th anniversary of Flodden and the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn behind us, you should know that Scotland is being invaded by the English yet again. It is the […]

It was still early when the garden erupted. The eruption woke me up. I lay still for a few moments trying to rationalise the sound through the dregs of sleep. […]

I love September because every year it saves me from an overdose of summer. By the time September dawns, or at least by the time it has got a week […]

In August pinewoods go all drowsy on me, flat-footed and weary like an old dog. I know this trait of pinewoods of old. I have, after all, been here before. I […]

I have reason to remember that tee shot. Kilspindie Golf Course at Aberla­dy, East Lothian coast, a beautiful early July day, sunlight bouncing off the deep blue Forth estuary, a […]

If you didn’t know what that sound is, at first hearing you could be forgiven for thinking that it is like the speech of the land itself, like blood, like […]

Rewilding is a buzzword I don’t much care for, and now that I think about it, so is “buzzword”. On the other hand, if it were proved that a buzzword like […]