Category: Social Life
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Joys of memory and of promise
Today we’re saying goodbye to a new friend. Our first friend here, our neighbour beside the little bolthole from which we began our lives in Scotland, has died. We shall be at the crematorium for the simple service, and then we’ll attend a memorial service in the little church here at the bottom of the…
Larry Winger
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The blue and white of our adopted home . . .
We were so relieved that the burgeoning hydrangea at the corner of our property has found a new lease of life ever since I trimmed out all the leaf rot, but the intensity of its blue this year is wonderful. And then, while it blooms, the tree poppy forest lining our entrance path has also…
Larry Winger
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Vintage Afternoon Tea at the Town Hall
It was to be a fund-raiser with a difference: yesterday the 10th of March, 2024, was Mothering Sunday here in the UK, and the idea was that mothers might enjoy a little indulgence, while listening to some delightful vintage jazz numbers. So the proprietor of a landmark, destination tea rooms, here in the Royal Burgh…
Larry Winger
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Resolved projects, and ongoing ones . . .
I could, I suppose, have used any number of project images to illustrate the delight of a project that’s been resolved, completed, finished, and the different sort of joy there is in a project that’s ongoing. But building images seem to have the most resonant capacity for metaphor. Our awkward gate, referred to in an earlier…
Larry Winger
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The week begins . . . with coffee and chat
Choirs all around the area are presenting their seasonal programs, often in a participative setting, where carols are enjoined and rafters rattled with enthusiasm. It was a busy weekend for the Cairn Chorus, here in the GlenKens, for example, and some members of that group even found time to sing in a traditional Carols by…
Larry Winger
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Informality, with riffs
We experienced the sort of Burns Night supper last night that combined the best of the tradition, yet in a kind of evolved, almost deconstructed way. A spontaneous, last-minute invitation was a welcome joy, and could we help with the preparation? We’d done a few formal Burns Night suppers in our time, hosting a crowd…
Larry Winger
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Theatrical delights
We realised this morning that we haven’t been to a live theatre show for years and years, pre-Covid actually, and possibly for a year before that. So our birthday treats, tickets to the intriguing comedy Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), had been eagerly anticipated since September. Every expectation was met! I’d made a few preparations…
Larry Winger
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Thoughts on generational change
We were chatting with our daughter yesterday, exclaiming over a new development in the Northumbrian village we’ve called home for the past thirty years. It seems that since the pandemic, property prices have skyrocketed in Allendale, as urban dwellers seek a bolthole in a rural idyll. What we hadn’t appreciated, and what our daughter thought…
Larry Winger
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The joy of fiction . . .
Lately I’ve been exploring adding elements of fiction into what might otherwise be rather prosaic memoir. I used to think this approach to understanding life was a sacrilege, a bowdlerisation of truth. I’m not that puristic anymore. Sometimes, for example, conflation of two different episodes, which didn’t actually happen in the time sequence portrayed, can…
Larry Winger
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A clear perspective . . .
Until I’m disabused, or have done some more reconnoitring with my handy compass app behind the New Galloway Golf Club, as we sit on the elegant slab bench looking over the Glenkens, I shall understand that on a clear day we’re seeing the Galloway Hills. My interrogation of Google has thrown up some interesting perspectives;…
Larry Winger
Roads to Joy 