Scotland

We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us.
When we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.

Andy Goldsworthy

Shuggie Bain will break your heart – and put the pieces back together again

August 23rd, 2021 Posted In: Politics, Scotland Tags: 2021, Douglas Stuart, Glasgow, Literature, Love, Politics, Queer, Scotland, Shuggie Bain, Women

Last night I went to Malmö City Library, to my first indoor cultural event since December 2019. And fittingly, wonderfully, it was Douglas Stuart, talking about Shuggie Bain. As I have written elsewhere, this book is astonishing, a tour de force of love and despair. Acclaimed by critics, loved by readers, translated into a slew […]

Closed Sunday

July 13th, 2017 Posted In: Place-based Learning Tags: 2017, Buen vivir, Children, Iain Crichton Smith, Lewis, Place-based Learning, Poetry, Politics, Scotland

The Sabbath is still taken very seriously on the isle of Lewis in the Western Isles. There may be Sunday ferry sailings, but not much else. Now I don’t care about not being able to shop one day a week, and I appreciate that if the swimming pool is open, then someone will have to […]

When I see one of these Free Church ministers on the street in Lewis, I feel like walking across the road and hitting him in the face.

Iain Crichton Smith

Aunt Julia

June 25th, 2017 Posted In: Art, Work that Reconnects Tags: 2017, creativity, Gaelic, Nature, Norman MacCaig, Place-based Learning, Poetry, Scotland

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast. I could not answer her — I could not understand her. She wore men’s boots when she wore any. — I can see her strong foot, stained with peat, paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel while her right hand drew yarn marvellously out of the […]

Scotland will be free when the last Church of Scotland minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post.

Tom Nairn

Fish Face – Are you ready?

October 15th, 2015 Posted In: Comics Tags: 2015, Comics, Copenhagen, creativity, Festival, Fish Face, Illustration, Jellyfish, Nature, Scotland, Zine Fest

Very excited to present the latest comic in the – perhaps never-ending since jellyfish are the cockroaches of the oceans – killer jellyfish series. On sale at Zine Fest in Copenhagen on Saturday, 17, October 2015. Are you ready?

We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. When we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.