As still as a Hawick night. I'm walking alone past the school, on my way to the park in the fall of twilight. Through the windows are classrooms; books, posters, little worlds that a new generation are living in. When I think back to primary school days and how much time must have been spent there, I remember from it very little. I suppose I must ( Read more... )

I ( Read more... )

It is south today, through these still-empty valleys of the mosstroopers. As I go the soundtrack is Earth's 'Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method', an album that throws back to a time when all the world was new and exciting and the future lay unwritten before me. But for a passage of years, what has really changed in that time; am I not in such ( Read more... )

( Adventures In Time )

Although this is essentially a post about why I cried at a Holocaust memorial, it does have a fairly lengthy opening section on something partly different. Stick with me, if you can.There are certain events that so change the world that you can never return to the collective state of mind that existed prior. For my generation, the obvious example ( Read more... )

I have been finding both enjoyment and unintended amusement in working through Barbour's 'Brus', one section in particular having appealed to me. These are chapters 21-23 (at least in the collated Cambridge and Edinburgh manuscripts that I am reading ( Read more... )

Up at 7 for the hens as usual, and then back to bed, again now as usual. Though I am not at all a morning person and arise from bed each day with the sole desire of returning (or indeed of not rising at all), by the time I return having been exposed to movement and the outdoor world my desire is only for a little extended comfort rather than sleep ( Read more... )

This is only a draft of an idea that might be the first chapter of a longer story, or more likely only a short story in itself. It requires revision, and more filling out of parts that have been sketched only in outline, but here is at least the seed of something that might become a thing in time.The dark hands of a servant girl are gently wrapping ( Read more... )

And just like that, the autumn. The air has turned and now carries a chill and as Jim Morrison said: "We had some good times, but they're gone / winter's coming on, the summer's almost gone". The night begins to reach right into the day, clawing back its empire ( Read more... )

There's a sublime chord sequence hidden in the 13th Floor Elevators' 'Dust' from the 'Easter Everywhere' album. It occurs only twice in the song, a switch from a barre C chord on the 3rd, up to a B7 on the 7th, and finally to an Em also on the 7th. That Em, missing out the lower E string and going 7-9-9-8-7 is just a beautiful chord, and when put ( Read more... )