They’d been told to keep off the grass, but Alec couldn’t resist two quick steps from the ash track and onto the park. There was no-one looking, the control room still empty of match commander and retinue, the stadium officials more concerned with the operation of the floodlights and the manning of turnstiles. Fitzpatrick and … Continue reading The Greatest Fan
Saturation
If the incident with McGroarty had provided some unexpected excitement it was short lived. There’d been some subterfuge in their attempts to execute more warrants, but the remainder of the week proved an anti climax. It wasn’t altogether fruitless. Alec had learned new tricks. The art of whistling bird calls as they entered each common … Continue reading Saturation
Last Man Standing
March 2016 A cold wind is blowing. Spring is around the corner, but winter is having a final hurrah. The boat is supported high on its cradle and twenty feet up, standing on the deck, I can see the inner basin of the harbour, marina pontoons bobbing around and, beyond that, the churning Firth of … Continue reading Last Man Standing
Snowflakes & Bayonets
Sometimes I receive unbidden, a childhood memory so clear and real that I believe myself to be my nine year old self, living in a three storey maisonette on a hillside overlooking a wide expanse of sea to a mountainous island. It is night time. The sky is the colour of paper-ash. Snow, falling in … Continue reading Snowflakes & Bayonets
A Legacy of War
I am a child of the sixties, reared on an incongruous mix of hippy ideals and World War II action movies. It was a period submerged in technicolour and viewed in Panavision. A childhood filled with the glory of war, a celebration of the the courageous, of rugged handsome men, calm under pressure, hoodwinking the … Continue reading A Legacy of War
Cherry Tree
It is Autumn. I am in her garden, raking heels through the leaves beneath the cherry tree. I am in dumb retreat as she tells me things I do not want to hear. A symposium of platitudes. She tells me that her love, once as wild as liquorice and peaches, has become altogether more platonic. … Continue reading Cherry Tree
First Day
The radio had ceased to function. There had been the occasional burst of song, the scattered chat of someone being up-beat for a living, but now there was only the crisp-hiss of static and the grumbling roar of tyres along the motorway. He twisted the dial in search of the elusive sweet spot, but the … Continue reading First Day
Doubts and Procrastination
So I’m home. Back to the old routine. The girls are off to school, the eldest having stomped off in tears because a school concert to be given in honour of the departing head mistress (newly announced) falls on the date of a planned trip to New York. First world problems... That old enemy, procrastination, … Continue reading Doubts and Procrastination
Moniack Mhor
A year to the day since I was last here, I am back. In the little cottage. Same room. Same view. Same feeling of peace. Just under two hundred miles from Glasgow, but a million miles from the perpetual motion of city life and the the gravitational pull of family. No longer an atom flying … Continue reading Moniack Mhor
The Beauty of Time
Technology is both a blessing and a curse. In this case I'm going with the former. The type of technology that would have cost you tens of thousands of pounds a decade or so ago, comes as standard in your smartphone. I live on a small rise in the land in a suburban enclave in … Continue reading The Beauty of Time
