Month: January 2023
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Submission hopes . . .
For some time now, I’ve been keeping a running list of the various pieces/submissions that I’ve got ‘out there’ waiting for a resolution. Will a piece be accepted/longlisted/shortlisted/awarded or ignored/rejected/disqualified/binned? Well, there’s a kind of frisson in the waiting, and it’s rather fun to have more than one submission awaiting a decision. In some cases,…
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History as grist for story . . .
Long ago, when we were young(er!), we visited Sicily several times, falling in love with the island. On one of our holiday adventures, we persevered and actually found the mausoleum, high up on Mt Venere above Caselmola, where the doughty Florence Trevelyan reached her last resting place. Not many tourists, we figured, actually make that…
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Simple pleasures . . .
I’ve been beaten at Scrabble by my beloved, consistently, since we took our maiden adventure together across Canada on the Canadian Pacific railway, back in 1981. We’ve played on a variety of boards, though the travel game with corner feet in each tile has survived intact through those forty years. Some day, perhaps, when we’re…
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A trip down memory lane . . .
I had cause yesterday to renew my mental acquaintance with the research fields of my youth, adult and middle-age experience. Now that I am old(er!) I have to traverse back some two decades to remember some of the epiphanies of my research endeavours. After finally being redundified from my postdoc passions at the hoary age…
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Running hot water
Having lived not far from Hadrian’s Wall, where there’s a lot of archaeological evidence of the Roman occupation, I’m aware that the concept of hot water on demand is not exclusively a modern lifestyle. But perhaps the universality of running hot water, if one can afford it in these times of cost-of-living crisis, is more…
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Snow on distant hills . . .
My beloved says, of snow, that she enjoys it from far away, in a scenic setting. Up close and personal not so much. Perhaps you have to be born into a snowscape to love it for itself, for the feeling of it. However the context, its presence heralds the cold. We passed below many snow-covered…
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Joys of the unexpected . . .
After the heavy rains, and the extensive flooding throughout the Glen Kens around Loch Ken, the sharp frost meant that the ground was solid enough to amble along upon. So we ventured into the mossy wood just beyond the frozen fairways of the neighbouring golf course. As we moved deeper into the hazel generations, I…
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Halfway to happiness
Moves and transitions are rarely easy, and when you don’t understand what’s going on, and why you’ve been displaced, it must be even more disorientating. We’re now about halfway through the adjustment phase, when Kali cat is allowed to ponder the great outdoors, but not to explore beyond what her eyes can see. It’s fair…
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Making the best . . .
It’s taken us some time to re-equilibrate to our new circumstances. Like a death in the family, I guess, a big move away from a lifestyle of decades standing is quite an emotional shock. You can prepare for it all you like, and in our case it’s been a year of thoughtful planning, but when…
Roads to Joy 