100 Seconds to Midnight

I like tracking things back to the point at which they began: a phone call from my school friend cancelling our arrangement to meet up on the first day of Fresher's Week which altered who I spoke to that day and ultimately the friends I made at University; a trip made to the very north of Scotland twenty years later to visit one of said friends, which coincided with Sid the dog running away from home and his fate being sealed when my son Hamish, proclaimed "He's just the right size!"; a whisper sent out into the Universe not long after about a dog called Nash which ten years later still, saw him come home. Out walking Sid the dog, Alastair and I used to see a couple walking a tricolour of Labradors.  Speculating as to their names and dreaming of our own little pack, we settled on Crosby, Stills and Nash: Crosby for our new dog, Sid could become Stills and Nash was out there somewhere waiting for us (I don't think we ever got as far as Young).  If you have never he...

In a roundabout way I think what I was trying to say last week is that I like measured outcomes. I work best to deadlines and have a tendency to gravitate towards doing things where the end result is more or less known at the start.  I have no doubt that, on some level, it is the relative safety of this approach that appeals to me, and, in the case of running events it's always good to witness the elation of those who have successfully crossed the finish before signing on the dotted line , although the smiles often belie the effort and sometimes pain in getting there.  Thus when the 'magnificent seven' registered for this year's Endure 24 within a week of finishing last year's event we thought we knew what to expect - and then 2020 arrived. But, if it was odd last year that we would choose to set up camp and then run five mile laps from midday Saturday to midday Sunday with only the promise of a T-shirt at the end, it may be odder still that we would do so under lo...

I am drenched with melancholy by the summer rain when the sky opens up and moves the  furniture of my mind around with an easy grace. The scent of heaven conjures up a frayed and torn duffel bag of words, I resist the temptation to write another poem, but I am not forlorn. By the river that empties into the sea,  I leave three words for you in the sand. The tide will wash them away, but not before we break into waves and crash against the dark grey sky. Anna (on Neopoet as Kailasana2) I am drenched with melancholy by the summer rain. I wish I had written this sentence not least because for the most part of the week, it is the very epitome of me.  It would appear that in many ways I am not ready for the lifting of lockdown, and am overcome by a sense of foreboding that was only amplified by the storm that whistled through the chimneys of our house yesterday. Don't get me wrong there are bits that I will be glad to see the back of and chance meetings with friends twice in f...

I was twelve when I first learned about salmon returning to the place of their birth to spawn. On holiday with the school, we were taken to view the fish ladder at Pitlochry - built so that the salmon can still make their way back up the river Tummel, after the construction of a hydroelectric dam rendered their journey impossible.  I don't remember being particularly inspired by the series of chambers, tunnels, mirky water and possible sighting of a fish, but how can anyone not marvel the fact that these fish, born in a river in Scotland, travel downstream out into the ocean, swim across the Atlantic (sometimes as far as Greenland) and then several years later make the journey back to the exact river where they were born so they can release their eggs and the cycle can begin all over again? And when it is nature, and not man, that puts an obstacle in their way in the shape of a waterfall, then nature also provides the answer by giving the fish the ability to leap up to 3 metres out...