scotland

Scotland highlights. Photographs by my sister Clare.

Our first days wander along the 5 miles of beach from Burghead to Findhorn, worm casts, clear sea, tracing the waters edge with bare feet.

Finding washed up Jellyfish on our return journey and throwing them back into the sea.

Scoffing my first knickerbocker glory since childhood in the Bog Cotton cafe, Cannich. 

Stopping in our tracks on hearing an odd sound in the sky while walking around Loch Affric. Turns out it was a Snipe, a feather in its tail creating this strange noise. 

Shrieking as a young Golden Retriever bounded over a rock and stuck its head in my rucksack, lured by a cheese sandwich. 

Wailing seals off the beach at Lossiemouth.

The breathtaking prettiness of Rosemarkie.

Seeing Moray Firth dolphins for the first time at Chanonry Point. Their fins and tails popping up in the water, the sound of their blowhole out breaths.

A strip of pink sky and wonder at the 11pm light on the drive back from Findhorn where I danced to the drums of Kakatsitsi.

Understanding gloaming for the first time, midsummer nights of twilight and dusk.

 Burghead on our arrival

 Loch Affric

 Rosemarkie

 Towards Fortrose

Burghead at 11pm

burghead

My grandfather, John Logan was born and raised in Burghead, Morayshire and my sister and I are renting a fisherman's cottage there for a week from tomorrow. It sounds impossibly romantic, but the online pictures of the cottage show swirling 70's carpets and dodgy decor - just how I like it! Not knowing my grandparents has bought the seeker and feeler out in me, piecing together stories with an intuitive mix of research and guesswork. What will I learn about John? What will I feel in the coming week? As much as I like questioning I enjoy the unknowing too, being comfortable with uncertainty.  

eyelids

Today, while waiting on platform 1 at Wakefield Westgate station I shut my eyes and turned my face to the sun. For the first time this year I had a moment to sit and feel the suns rays on my skin and it was marvellous in its newness and familiarity. A wood pigeon cooing nearby brought memories of summers past and bright orange light streamed through the skin of my eyelids. 

I wondered at this particular shade of orange, wanting to capture it somehow and decided to find its match by searching my photographs. This is the closest I could get...

 Tulip, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, 2011

Camera Obscura, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2013

Balloon, Flekkerøy, Norway, 2013

Rose in Mum's garden, Loughton, Essex, 2013

big CD things

Conversation with a 17 year old last week. 

Him: 'I was looking through my dad's... um, big CD things' (making a circle in the air with both forefingers)

Me: 'Records?' 

Him: 'Yep'

within and without

After over two decades of renting rooms in shared housing, with a few blissful years in between when able to rent a flat or house to myself I have my first home - a flat in East London. I am so blessed in this and alongside the physical sorting and space making has come an emotional outpouring which has required as much unpacking, careful ordering and analysis as the creation of my physical space.

I've scrubbed, cleaned, prepped and repainted the walls of the flat, filling cracks, sanding down, making good. The walls are now a beautiful shimmering white, some took four coats of paint to reach this state and it was an effort at times. Now these blank surfaces await my new projections, a holding space for whatever comes next, a base from which to grown further. I already feel more 'adult' in this space, not living under others rules.

During this process I discovered boxes that had been packed 13 years ago by the 30 year old me. Her hopes and dreams were contained in these cardboard boxes and tears flowed as I said hello to her and witnessed the dearly held plans and desires that hadn't worked out, and I looked at this life I have now and wondered how I got here. 

And so, it goes on. Sort, recycle, sift, pass on what I no longer need, bin useless things - alongside I've binned emotional stuff too, working through regret, mistakes and also conjuring hope and a vision for my future. The experience has taken me as low as I can go, but you know what? I'm ok, more than ok. To allow myself to sink was necessary, to grieve properly, consciously, painfully, has cleared my chest and heart, and from this clearer space a new vision has emerged and that is wonderful.

So thank you flat, thank you cardboard boxes for the lessons, thank you younger self and the wise older self who is floating around for me, I'll meet her one day. There are many blessings in a broken heart, and the only way is through.

I'm finally beginning to understand this saying that has stayed in my head from somewhere, someplace. I've begun to 'do'.

'To know and not to do is not yet to know'
Wang Yangming

and now he's dead

In early January I traveled to Aylesbury by train, visiting my sister for her birthday. As the train stopped in Amersham a conversation began behind me.

Grandmother: 'My dad used to live in Amersham'

Little boy: 'Your dad was really old'

Grandmother: 'He wasn't really, he was 65. He was a heavy smoker, he had lung cancer'

Little boy: 'And now he's dead'

The lady went on to tell of her sister and friend who also died at 65. The boy had been told off for picking his nose and I felt him prod the back of my left arm through the gap between my seat and the window. Inside I winced hoping he wasn't wiping a bogy on my jacket.

things my dad left

A scored ceiling tile that can never be disguised with paint. When I lay in the bath at my mum's house my eyes are always drawn to a particular spot on the ceiling. The tiles show my dad's thinking process and learning as he stuck them to the ceilings curve. The tile by the wall is scored deeply with a knife to bend along the curve, the next one is scored lightly and the next pressed into place with no scoring. The third looks best. If it was me I would have taken off the first two tiles and reapplied them, not my dad, he just kept going. In fact, he didn't keep going and the ceiling remained unfinished years before his death and I completed the job much later. My own learning still shows too as a couple of the tiles are cut too big and bow downwards. On reflection this may have been the only 'project' my dad and I worked on (unknowingly) together, a conversation in polystyrene tiles, he began and I finished.

A pear tree. 

An apple tree, an Epicure - very tasty.

A slab path and patio and brick planters for flowers.