Fay Young

Category: Diary

  • A last look at Earth – again

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    The adventures of Tim Peake have set me rummaging in an old blog post inspired by an earlier space mission. It’s both interesting and depressing to see how little has changed in the ten years since I wrote it. And that ‘Last Look at Earth’ becomes more symbolically potent as our awareness of climate change grows while…

  • Scotland needs jesters

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    I looked a Gift Horse in the mouth. Or, to be more accurate, I joined the tourists in Trafalgar Square snapping pictures of the latest sculpture occupying the Fourth Plinth. After a day in the Houses of Parliament the Tory ‘long term economic plan’ sprang to mind as I admired the skeleton; bronze bones stark and…

  • Let Scotland flourish

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    After a momentous night, a new day.  In every street of every town and city in Scotland there is likely to be a mix of deeply conflicting emotions. Relief, anger, grief, disappointment, jubilation, maybe even despair as the reality of the referendum result sinks in.  It will take time to recover a sense of balance…

  • The song is older than the sorrow

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    Breakfast on a wintry Edinburgh morning to the background melodies of South Uist.  I woke this morning with tunes from last night’s show dancing a jig in my head.  It’s a sign of a good performance when both the singer and the songs follow you home.

  • Silver Highway Revisited

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    “There she is,” he says with understated pride as he swings out of the trap door on to the parapet connecting the twin towers holding the suspension cables. “One of the finest suspension bridges in the world.”

  • Old skool blogging

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    Bliss. Blogging in the sun, sitting outside with birds singing, bees humming, light breeze ruffling sea-shore sounds from the aspen leaves and only the distant hiss of hot tyres on the M90 across the fields reminding me that tiresome hustle and bustle goes on beyond Pond Cottage.

  • RIP the quick brown fox

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    Ah, the typewriter. I’m sitting, hands on laptop keyboard, staring at the screen but my mind’s eye looks back to an old Royal machine in a long-ago newsroom where I sit, fingers poised above firm round buttons, piles of screwed up copy paper on the floor, staring into the middle distance, waiting for words.

  • Mad hatter’s tea party at Balmoral

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    This is the hat that I did not wear to meet the Queen.  I did not wear any other hat and I did not meet the Queen. But I got near. As a would-be republican I have not been flaunting the invitation but yesterday Ray and I went to our first Royal Garden Party at…

  • Talk to the feet

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    Dear Diary (if I may call you that), I have been neglecting you badly over the last month or two. But I have not been idle. During May I walked 104 miles during the Great British Walking Challenge. On the hypothetical journey from John O Groats to Lands End that would have taken me roughly…

  • Dancing with mummies and dinosaurs

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    Infectious enthusiasm from the smiling woman at the door. “Go and play,” she says. On the ground floor, there’s face painting and a silent disco, dinosaurs and drinks. Oh, and there’s giant insect handling on the top floor.  Just for a moment I get a slightly unpleasant giant insect flashback.

  • In memory of the man who brought Hendrix to Spalding

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    A brief tribute to Brian Thompson, the man who had the vision and courage to create the legendary Barbecue 67 rock festival.

  • Flaming autumn

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    Beth Mad weather.  I take my morning coffee out to join Beth basking in an upside down season.  The other day I heard geese flying over, there are red leaves piled up on the ground and a robin sits on the wheelbarrow watching me watching him. All the signs of late September are staring me…