English and History is a subversive romance, set in a Scottish town, two estranged friends, both English teachers, reconnect through adversity and their shared love of books. 'Chris, what can I do? Don't say fuck off because I won't, but what can I do?' I want him to shut up, to go away, I clamp my hands over my ears. ‘Maybe it would help if you called Eilidh? Maybe she's just scared to call you?' I curl tighter into a foetal shape beneath the quilt, shielding my face. How ca

For my Granny Keith I don’t believe in life after death, hauntings or voices from the grave. I think what we need from people we loved, is within easy reach. Sometimes it is easier to get comfort from them than from the living. Her life was endless gifts to mine, and no one can take her away. And if I feel, her strong hand on my shoulder, or stroking the back of my hand. If she’s with me when I wake alone in the dark It doesn’t mean that I believe in ghosts, just that I loved

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 went to festivals when I was younger, bare faced, muddy and skint in charity shop velvet and cords. No subtlety in our taste for pretty boys and girls with loud guitars. We drank cider, snogged strangers, threw up. We bathed in sweat and lager in the mosh pit. We would not have taken a good selfie. We did not have sequins around our eyes. It’s age, I’m sure, but they don’t look like they’re having much fun. From her boyfriend’s shoulders, two rows from the front, she’s upda

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

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,

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

The problem is we are islands. The silence is hostile. Even the smoke signals get lost. It takes someone else to suggest a bridge. One that might meet in the middle. Ask him to join you on the bridge, she suggests. Look at each other, she reminds us. My island has a stormy coastline. His, impenetrable cliffs. Join me on the bridge, I ask him. Okay, but what do we have to build it with? How far will each of us come? Building isn’t your strong point. Join me on the bridge, he

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

Steam off a hot horse and a drying road. Heavy rain that dies away like a round of applause, leaving the air singing to a beat of dripping trees. Anxiously counting magpies, where is your wife? Tiny purple flowers among the buttercups. Fireworks of yellow on the broom. A red squirrel squashed on the tarmac. A rare red one, he should have lived. Shot-silk silver birch bark flashing by us. Cattle jostling along the fence line, shitting and squelching. Clachnaben hunching wart-n