Old, half-timbered houses with uneven beams buckling and bent into one another like two drunks steadying themselves. Everything on its side, lead pipe handrails caught in their footings, ivy-choked trees. Pale morning birdsong, footpaths leading down the valley ending in… Read More ›
parenting
Salthill Serenade, Galway
Wet snow tangled in the hair of the grass outside of London, topping the cars like confetti. Going back to a Sunday a month ago in Galway, a neighborhood ten minutes outside of town called Salthill, that day we started… Read More ›
Painting titled ‘Easter 1916,’ featuring Patrick Pearse
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 ›
‘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 ›