And so, this is literally the first chance I’ve had to sit down (pun may be intended) and write properly in two weeks. Or something. I should take a tape recorder on my travels. Isla has been off school for two weeks on sneaky Scottish school holidays that used to be for farming, and are now for nothing. But, we did stuff with those two weeks. There was a lot of riding shotgun for me. I love road trips. Listening…
I moved to the country about three years ago. I was working through post-natal anxiety and maybe mistakenly thought that the fresh air would rattle my brain back to whatever normal is. (Normal is relative and over-rated) We first moved in with my family. My father wanted to be like The Waltons. But The Waltons is TV. Old TV. (And I love my Dad, but I’ve learned that I also love reliable internet connections and family time that doesn’t involve…
And so, I was quiet the last few weeks because I had no words. My Aunt Lucy died, and then it was her funeral. And I really wish teleporters were already a thing. I received word of her death on the way back from dropping Neil off at the ferry for his two weeks in the office. My Isla asked me, I swear, if I was crying ‘because Aunt Lucy’s in heaven. Can we call her up?’ Kinda sorta. And…
Over the weekend, the fam and I did an experiment. We tried a road-trip to Inverness without the added interestingness of staying overnight somewhere. Our experiment garnered varying results. You knew that, right? Stick with me. It takes about two and a half hours to get to the thriving metropolis of Inverness from here. I put my morning coffee in my giant turquoise Starbucks travel mug and we piled in the car. Now. I have always encouraged Isla to be…
‘Isla, get off the stage, Dearest.’ We’d just arrived at the theatre after three hours in the car. Isla was burning of some energy by strutting across a platform thing I think was leftover from another performance. Part of Isla’s Christmas gift was tickets to The Nutcracker when Scottish Ballet brought it to Inverness. We didn’t think we’d get to go, because weather was happening right up until we started our road-trip. But we piled in the car, picked up…
