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Days That Change

Have you lost your mind? Where’s your sense of humour? My mind goes everywhere it can, it loves to travel. My sense of humour is not on call; it turns up when it feels like it. Is your heart really in it? Listen to it, what does it say? My heart is wherever I am, beating in my chest. It says nothing. It beats and thumps and carries on. It won’t break or melt, harden or soften. You’re not yourself these days. I am always myself. It’s the days that change, and I go with them. #

I have been looked after

Politely turning down offers is not an option. I can’t look after the kids, I can’t do anything. My chest is rattling and my skin oozing sweat, my legs weak and unreliable. I don’t even feel like writing. Speaking hurts. Doctor saw me within hours, out of hours, efficient and kind. Pneumonia, he says, not flu. I’ve been cared for all weekend. I have been looked after. It feels good, when everything else hurts. The best thing about being ill is that you can’t help but be helpe

Snake Venom

I bought some cream for my face. It was on offer and I’m nearly forty. Snake Venom, it said, will instantly freeze your wrinkles. I dropped it in my basket and moved on to the nappies and wipes. Hang on, Snake Venom? Really? Improved Formula with SYN-AKE, a snake venom-like peptide. That sounds artificial, and toxic, but I really don’t want to look old. Instant Effect Wrinkle Filler, for visibly smoother and plumper skin. Mercury, Botulism, Leeches straight from Medieval Phys

Good Boys/ Bad Boys

It’s Heathcliff’s fault, and River Phoenix and Pete Doherty didn’t help much. It becomes a habit. Of course, no one is good or bad, there are only shades and flaws. She doesn’t need him to spear a mammoth. She’d like to talk about books and ideas and feelings. Yes. Those. But she stopped believing, and she chose her own cave. The shadows in there are livid and writhing. So, she covers them with cave paintings of the bookish soulmate she doesn’t deserve. Crushing her fear into

Swan Republic

Mummy, I would like a humming-bird and also, I would like a swan. Well, there are no humming birds in Scotland, and I think all the swans belong to the queen. Why? Emm…history? They just do. We can’t keep them as pets. Anyway, they’re fierce. The Queen is greedy, keeping all the swans for herself. Why does she even want a pet swan if they are nasty and vicious? I don’t want her ever to come to my house. She won’t, sweetheart. She won’t come to our house. Why not? She’s busy,

Forest of Birse

Paddling in the cold peaty water, the river stole his left jelly shoe and my right flip-flop. He uses the slimy wooden weir as a slide. She doesn’t like the moss and pine needles touching her tiny toes. She’s hot and sad today. He wades out to a grassy island to share his picnic. I came here thirty or more years ago, with my mum and dad. The memory brought me back, with my own babies, to play in the pools and on the rocks of the Feugh. You can’t make a memory. Memories make t

G for Good

I like it when people have harmless rituals against their fears. She walks past the piano, and plays a G for good. She will salute a solitary magpie. She will never begin a journey without St Christopher around her neck. She will always leave through the same door she came in by. We can’t carry our tattered, smelly toys or blankets with us. There may not be a hand to hold. So these must do instead. I don’t think they are a concession to fear, I think they are a flip of the mi

Bleach and eyeliner

It took me a long time to find a way to look. Bleach and eyeliner, velvet and leather, black and silver. Boots and lipstick, a diamond in my nose. Now this is me. Like it or not. It’s superficial, but it’s an achievement. To know how you want to look. There are other things I know about myself now. I don’t like small talk. Pigeons make me flinch and scream. I love Jack Daniel’s I’ve stopped wanting to like red wine and malt whisky and hip music. When the light’s on, I look al

Throwing Cheese at the Space Birds

Mummy, imagine if there was a tree as big as twenty-eight million thousand school buses, and it went up as high as the moon? Would you climb up that tree to the moon? Yes, I would climb and it would take lots of days and years. I would go with Polly. What would you do on the moon? I would show the aliens my butt. You’d need a lot of sandwiches to keep you going when you were climbing up to the moon. Cheese sandwiches. When I got to the moon, I would throw cheese at the space

City Walking

I have only a finite number of steps for city walking. Glamour, squalor, edification and dereliction crowd me like the filthy pigeons. It looks best from the rooftop, or better still the Crags. Footsore and sticky, we take the Waverley Steps. I’m glad when the train crosses the Forth. The Lomond Hills like a child’s painting. Then the Tay and the sheen of Lunan Bay, the Angus Glens ushering us North to where the soil is Grassic-Gibbon red. We compare notes. Mostly, I have liv

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