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 ›
writing
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 ›
The ‘angel’s share’: lost whisky, lost memories
After sharing the same room, the same car, the same bathroom, I can see where Stephen King was coming from in his story about the writer Jack Torrance who collapses into alcoholism, writes nonsense, starts seeing dead people. Charlotte’s going… Read More ›
Day 15 in Scotland, coming into Oban
The Latvian-Scottish hairstylist in the salon across the street from our flat holds my hair up in the mirror, both of us looking at it, and says it’s a disconnected style, which I ask her to define but she can’t… Read More ›
‘A shadow on the door of a cottage on the shore’
It has the feel of a wet campground, all the smoke and everything damp, watching the Guy Fawkes 5th of November fireworks and bonfire display here in Inverness, the largest festival of its kind in northern Scotland, because I have… 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 ›
Cloud herding in the Highlands
There are two good reasons, probably more, to get a new job right away if you’ve lost your current one. First, you don’t want any gaps in your resumé. Like a house with a For Sale sign, the longer it… Read More ›
The inner rings of meta-ness, Inverness
Monday. Put on a new shirt, examined the tick bite for a ring, realised we have too much stuff. Is there any point to unpacking it, to let it breathe? Seems all this packing is an emotional thing. Carrying more… Read More ›
The Table of Contents
Our last morning in Arbroath, the wind and rain have stopped and everything has gone still. I walk the estate in the opposite direction from last time, spot two beasts in the distance, perhaps the same that startled Dawn the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 