Sometimes architecture can achieve more than the sum of its parts, so that it creates not just a building but a presence in the hearts and minds of those who, for one reason or another, rub shoulders with it.
If I promise that this will be my very last utterance on the subject of Brexit, will you please hang in there at least as far as the second paragraph?
So, that has got rid of the backward spring then.
My old home town’s ambition to become a tourism destination specialising in cruise liners scares the hell out of me.
I took part in a nature writing festival at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh at the weekend. It was called Connect With Nature.
Between the years of 1870 and 1994, more than 10,000 people were buried in Dundee in unmarked graves. I am no-one’s idea of a historian, so this is not the kind of information I normally carry around in my head.
A mountain hare and a raven met to discuss the events of recent times.
I was back in Glen Doll at the weekend, walking with a Scots Magazine group, and found it looking like winter but feeling like spring, that typical Highland brew that materialises whenever the frontiers of these two seasons rub up against each other. But, for me, the trouble with travelling to Glen Doll is having to drive through Glen Clova without stopping. It’s a bit like having to drive through Skye simply to catch the ferry to Harris, except Glen Clova has a place in my heart of hearts claimed by no other landscape.
The reputation of Scotland’s landowners took another hefty blow in the solar plexus in the seven days since I made the case for legislation to protect the red fox from the worst excesses of what passes for land management, after a protest outside the Scottish Parliament about abuse of foxhunting legislation.
A whale washes up dead on an Angus beach and makes big headlines. A mass stranding of whales on an Australian beach makes national television bulletins over here, 10,000 miles away.