Staying up late listening to Toto, eating carrots and reading old blog posts, the unease that comes from seeing where you were compared to where you are now, and how little things change over time. Charlotte’s most prized stuffed animal… Read More ›
parenting
‘Dreams are like water, colourless and dangerous’
It’s The Wednesday of our Lives, halfway through a nine-month tour of Europe, three months in the UK. We remind Lily dreams aren’t real, sometimes they’re just a manifestation of our fears and hopes — but dreams you want to make… Read More ›
How it looks from the inside of an Edinburgh flat while reading
The owner comes in to take measurements of the sofa bed that’s broken, apologises, says he assumed we’d be out at the museums on a day like this or seeing the town but we’re not; we’ve come all this way… Read More ›
Postcard from Holyrood Palace
The girls are burned out on castles, history, foreign languages and pizzas from Tesco, leek soup. I buy a box of corn flakes to tie us back home, we leave the house in search of lunch in Edinburgh, but the… Read More ›
Last Wednesday in Edinburgh
Thursday. Full-on tears, sobbing, from the kids — our night-time ritual protracted to around 11. The onset of hormones with Lily, Charlotte tags along for good measure. I build our first fire of autumn, the top floor of our Edinburgh… Read More ›
View northwest from the Cairn of Greatest Sorrow
Some bars I’ll walk into and just walk right out, pretending I’m looking for someone. The bar, “Lochavulgin” or some other name that gets stuck in your throat: I throw the door open right on cue to a Foreigner song: I… Read More ›
‘Is evil something you are, or something you do?’
We’ve hung a roadside atlas of Scotland over the door in our flat, draped there like something we shot and dragged in for drying — it looks so big on paper, but you can see much of it we’ve covered… Read More ›
Let’s pretend we’re blind
I get lost in the canal side streets as I knew I would and lose track of the names, but recognise a jar of olives in a store front window and remember it was on my left before, and stop to turn… Read More ›
The piper will lead us to reason
At the German school, the kids get dismissed for five minutes between every class to go outside and get some fresh air or have a smoke, some of the younger ones play on the climbing bars and hang upside down… Read More ›
Uncommon denominators
Today we put down a deposit on a used car in a town we couldn’t pronounce that sounded like a slur or spit coming up — Eberhard got right on the used car search with his handy at the Bahnhof… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 