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

My body is fighting a virus. My joints ache, my head hurts. Through the night I couldn’t sleep for shivering, my teeth chattered, despite a hot water bottle. I fell asleep and woke in the night to peel off my pyjamas, soaked in sweat. I wake up so grateful that the kids are staying with Granny and Granda. I don’t know how I’ll get out of bed, but I do. I count the hours between doses of paracetamol and ibuprofen, drink water, grab a sleep when she’s napping. The thing is, wha

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

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

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

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