Category: Writing
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I wish I could craft words as easily and intuitively as I shape beeswax with my hands. Words on a white page have always seemed too stark to me, too crude to describe a life lived. I didn’t learn to read until late into primary school..written words were baffling to me. Despite this struggle, I’d…
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The next phase was Musselburgh. Plucked from teuchter life and dropped into a council house on the edge of Edinburgh. No more sheep shit. Just slabs and snails. Still wet, still wild in its own way. We found snails in the garden like treasure. We hunted them in the undergrowth, noses to the earth, breathing…
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My dad worked on a fish farm on Loch Laxford. At the end of the day, we’d watch his boat bob into view – a tiny dark shape moving steadily toward the shore. We’d race down the hill to meet him, four pairs of wellies sliding through wet grass and sheep shit, yelling like gulls.…
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When I was very small, we lived on the shores of Loch Laxford, in a house called Trefoil. It sat near Scourie, in Sutherland – a ragged place hidden between water and rock, where the wind came in off the loch like an animal. We had barely any television. The signal crackled like sea foam,…