dysnomia...

Long ago, so the story goes, the Devil was making his way through the glens of Fife carrying a load of rocks. There he came upon Maggie, lea...

'Surprise is everything with me. When I go to bed at night I give myself instructions to startle myself when I wake in the morning.'...

How strange for the world to have turned and be facing the other way again. Why do we sleep through these great rotations? The night sky ...

'The Gods their shapes to winter-birds translate, But both obnoxious to their former fate. Their conjugal affection still is ty'd,...

Cyclone Friedhelm. Image from Wiki Commons There have been warnings for days. Meteorologists have been tracking an unusually active kink...

I was fortunate while in London to catch the very end of the Ghosts of Gone Birds exhibition at Rochelle School, Shoreditch. The visual exh...

Across the dunes and salt margins of Aberlady Bay darkness advances swiftly. There are no roses or carnations in the sunset, only chrysanthe...

'Wiv a ladder an' some glasses You could see to 'Ackney Marshes If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between.' chorus f...

It would be remiss of me to allow autumn to pass without getting all lyrical about the colours. But after the wordiness and (some have comme...

' This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.' fro...

Through the middle of Paris runs the Seine, a fine river. In the middle of the river is an island where the first settlers, the Romans, foun...

A combination of other demands has conspired to keep me away from these pages in recent weeks, some necessary but dull, others entirely plea...

'The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.' Matthew ch6 v23 (King...

Gavin Maxwell was left unimpressed by chanterelles. In Ring of Bright Water he recounts them growing in profusion near C amusfeàrna, the fi...

' Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -' from To Autumn  by John Keats ...

So that's that then. The season of Edinburgh festivals is over for another year. It ended, as it always does, with an exhilarating firew...

Returning to the Whin Sill briefly, here is a photograph taken last weekend of Lindisfarne Castle, built on an isolated tooth of whinstone o...

'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. Wit...