One thing always leads to another
I’m a journalist. I’ve always been curious about people and places.
I started writing about other people’s gardens a long time ago and somehow I’ve ended up having a wild garden that’s open to the public.
This site is a collection of my writing on gardens, culture, wildlife, the environment and even a little politics.
The garden is open through Scotland’s Garden Scheme supporting Children’s Hospices Across Scotland.
We are open now for spring walks. Please don’t hesitate to let us know when you’d like to come. Just fill in the Contact form. Give us a call. Find out more about Pond Cottage Garden
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Let nature sing? Our blackbird sings the blues
#LetNatureSing. Are we listening? In front of our eyes and ears, the natural world is shrinking. ‘Let Nature Sing’ is a lyrical call to action. The RSPB recorded birdsong has the haunting sound of another time, a forgotten place.
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What are we stumbling into? Messages of hope and fear from Amsterdam
How can we be so careless? We cannot afford to forget lessons of another time when populist opportunists arose from recession to destroy human decency.
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In search of the emotional museum
Can museums use popular culture to engage a wider audience? What better time could there be to explore what shapes our identities? Let’s hit the road…
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Edinburgh Makars mak mischief
No mics, no loudspeakers, no wham-bam poetry slam. This was a poetry stand-up with a difference – a gently subversive event in the commercial centre of Edinburgh.
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For love of life
I thought back to another year I knew Autumn, lifting potatoes and stacking peats On Mull… Ruthven Todd There it is. Reading aloud from his latest book, Alexander McCall Smith nabs a furtive shadow from another time with a few lines from Ruthven Todd’s poem written in 1938.
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What’s the story in a Russian passport?
Some passports arouse an obliging smile While others are treated as mud. Vladimir Mayakovski A passport can conceal or reveal, open or close. Who knows how the true-blue British passport will be treated after Brexit, but right now Russian travellers are likely to be attracting more than average scrutiny at border control. And none too…
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Irish passport to peace?
Please pardon any wobbly bits in the piece that follows. This was a two-fingered exercise on my iPad, written and posted by hand for Sceptical Scot from Seat 53 on the train from Edinburgh to Kings Cross. A journey long enough to explore two passports and changing identities. Travelling light, I’m sitting on the train…
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Hunger for hope: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen
The food is waiting for us. Colours and aromas of Syrian feasts in dishes of creamy humous, smokey aubergine, spicey beetroot, roasted carrot dips, all laid out in pretty bowls on a crowded table. Imad, our smiling host, invites us to sit.
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Ice breakers
And after the snow melts…snowdrops. Good to walk without plunging up to the knees in white stuff. Even better to feel the warmth of the sun. For the first time in two weeks the road to Pond Cottage is open and, apart from the odd Henry Moore shapes emerging from what’s left of roadside snowdrifts,…
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Rite of Spring
Here’s the Rite of Spring playing in front of me. Close up and breathtakingly personal. The Scottish Ballet’s raw reworking is not for casual viewing. How on earth did I think I could combine it with a spot of ironing?
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Putting HER story up in lights
My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by; Robert Louis Stevenson: The Lamplighter My daily walk was later than usual. After five o’clock in January the skies are dark and pavements less inviting. This is Leerie Lamplighter time in Edinburgh…
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That jiggery-pokery thing called life: poem for the new year
At first I find it hard to choose a poem from Judi Benson’s, Hole in the Wall. She became Writer in Residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary just a year after the death of her husband, Ken Smith, and there are lines in this book which I find painful to read.