Coffee on the doorstep

I fill the cup with boiling water from the small urn on the kitchen worktop - a nod to our attempt at being economical with expensive power bills - and the smell of coffee wafts upwards. Although it's just freeze dried stuff it's decent enough and I'm almost drooling at the thought of that first sip of the day. I resist the temptation to take the hit now and pick up my book and head for the front door. The house faces South and catches any warmth the weather may give {not much this month - what IS going on with that? It's supposed to be summer!} and is a favourite spot for a quiet coffee and contemplation of life the universe and everything of a morning. Today I've already been outside with my bucket of seed and filled all the feeders front and back of the house, topped up the niger seed feeder which is a favourite of our local goldfinch population and I've dropped a few suet balls in the cage like affairs which hang from the shed at the rear of the house and the old pear tree at the front. The front of the house is the main feeding area for our local birds - it used to be the rear of the house but for some reason there is a much bigger variety now visiting the front, leaving the rear garden as the domain of sparrows, pigeons, starlings and jackdaws and a couple of pugnacious robins. The old pear tree here at the font of the house, left over from last century's orchard from which the house takes its name, has several feeders of various kinds hanging from it and already there are almost a dozen birds either feeding or hanging around on branches looking for the chance to jump in as I put my coffee cup down on the step and take a seat beside it while I start to rifle the books pages to find my place.

A few seconds later I smile in contentment with the first sip and settle down in the warmth of the early morning sun already starting to lose myself in the tale of a fictional Edinburgh detective inspector and his assorted ne'er do well adversaries. Although it's warm it's breezy and from around the garden there's the rustle of leaves and the movement of wind across my bare arms and face. Despite that it's comfortably warm -for a Scotsman at least! Several minutes pass and the coffee gets lower in the mug as I sometimes read and sometimes just watch the comings and goings on the tree in front of me. Around the corner, just out of sight, comes the sound of a wild squabble from the feeder attached to the window of the library where I sit when it's not so warm as this morning. Two juvenile starlings in their muted colours dart across from the window to the tree continuing their altercation as they go until seperate perches among the leaves end the dispute. A couple of jackdaws and an enormous crow pompously strut across the lawn beneath the feeders ready to lay claim to any dropped jewels from the small birds gorging above their heads. The two juvenile starlings are now both hanging from the suet ball feeder as they renew their squabble and become much more engrossed in this than the bounty at their toes. As I watch they clash together and are so involved they fall locked together out of the tree without seperating and land on the head of the enormous crow at which all three explode into started departure.

Peace reigns once more as I turn the page and reach for the coffee cup only to find the last dregs have gone cold. I head inside to get a refill and by the time I get back a moment later threatening clouds have rushed in and the wind has picked up. A startling rainbow juts from the hill in front of the house and I manage a photo or two in the few moments of its life.

That's hint enough for me as I collect my book and close the front door behind me. This coffee will be drunk inside in the comfort of my armchair in the library.

I think I feel a blog coming on.

See you later.

Listening to

Insomniacle Me

Hullo ma wee blog,

Another sleepless night. The insomnia which has come and gone over the years has come again recently and I spent all of last night wishing I could get to sleep, either from the duvet wrapped depths of my bed or from the sofa in the lounge or the comfy chair in the library.

It's one of the worst feelings I've experienced, being dog tired and yet being unable to sleep. When I'm in one of these periods I often find myself resenting the fact that I get tired, hating the torture of knowing that no matter how knackered I'm feeling that the bed is just a temptation and won't give me the rest I crave. I come to hate my bed at times like this - so different from the comfortable place it normally is, I begin to see it as almost deceitful with it's promise of a soft embrace and a good nights kip.

Insomnia laden nights leave me exhausted and barely able to function during the day after a while and again resenting the fact that when you want to be awake you'll instead be almost comatose and will spend the day dreaming of sleep or dozing off for fitful minutes at a time, waking defensively as you want to increase the chances of a good nights sleep tonight. So, not only is the night a battle to get to sleep, but the day is a battle to stay awake. For once I'm glad I'm not working, especially since my previous job involved huge amounts of driving. It would be murder the way I feel this morning.

One of the rare advantages of sleepless nights is that you do get the chance to see some incredible dawns and today was one of those small consolations; the first red rays stretching out across the garden and slowly reaching toward the red sandstone walls of Sparrow Castle a hundred yards away until it turned it soft crimson and then gently softened further through to a wonderful rose colour until it in turn eventually began to pale as the sunlight proper crept up the wall and across the roof. Even feeling like I do it kept me enthralled for an hour this morning, sitting here in the library with the first coffee of the day keeping me company as I tried not to miss any part of it. Pure magic.

See you later.

Listening to

Cat-a-tonic.

Hullo ma wee blog,

I wake slowly not wanting to be released from the warm and comfortable oddity of knowing I'm in bed and  asleep. As I come slowly up through layers of gentle awareness and away from the dream state, layers of sound come to the fore; raindrops softly pattering the velux window across the room; slow drips from the underside of the window frame hitting the metal flashing at the joint of the red pantiles of the roof. Beyond these sounds comes a stir of wind and an early birds sing-song, close yet muted by distance and the rain, the kind of gently dropping rain that I hear my father's deeply distinctive voice in my head call  'just a wee smirr' in that broad Scots dialect he used. I smile with the memory and let my mind follow the sound out of the window through the rain and I concentrate on the birdsong as it warbles and undulates across the garden from the branches of one of the plum trees there. The sound moves up and down, a plaintive, thoughtful, appreciative hymn to a morning not quite started. Further out others take up the call. The jackdaw's caw from the mature trees beyond the next door cottage is for once not abrasive, but softened too in the air by distance and gentle rain. From the roof of the cottage a gull joins into this almost Disneyesque call to morning. In my minds eye I see it throw back its head and stretch its wings as it does so. Small birds cheep and the hens across the garden fence cluck from within their roost, eager to be out. I hear a birds scuttling feet on the roof tiles just outside the window.

I am awake.

My eyes open and register the soft grey of approaching dawn, the colours of the room undefined in the gloom, straight edges of the door and furniture still blurred and indistinct. The duvet is plumped around me and I see the outline of my Lovely G at my side. Beyond her lies Jess, visible only as a few blobs of ginger and black against the white of the duvet as her mainly white coat is also swallowed up despite the gently increasing palette now developing from shade. My movement has disturbed her slumber too, but not quite to the point of being awake. {Jess isn't an 'early bird' kind of cat} Still in her dream state she twists and stretches, ending up lying on her back, eyes closed, rear legs up and the pads of her back paws pointing to the ceiling. Her tail twitches languorously between her legs and she stretches out a paw beyond her head, splaying the pads and showing its claws as she does so, the other paw held close to her chest like a child with a doll. A deep sigh emits from her chest and slowly, slowly the outstretched paw relaxes until it rests on the duvet beyond her nose. Her tail starts a twitch but stills as she falls back into a deep sleep, one rear leg giving a minuscule spasm which lifts it a couple of centimetres before it too sinks slowly back to its former place. She snores, a small sound that brings a smile to my lips as I ease out of bed and silently collect my clothes, leaving both sleeping bodies behind.  I take one last look in at them before pulling the door closed behind me and turning to head downstairs to the computer and the luxury and comfort of an early morning coffee.

I can't take the grin from my face as I open the door to the kitchen.

Magic. Pure and simple. Magic.

Listening to this: An early morning favourite wakener.

Ritual Smugness....

A Jackdaw lands on the roof.

Hullo ma wee blog,

Mornings, especially early mornings, are my time in the house. This is particularly true for Sunday mornings like today when I wake rested and ready to go at 5.15am. Today the sun glints soft gold into the bedroom through the bottom of the cracked open velux window. Birds are singing and there is a definite feel of freshness and vitality to the air. Despite this I try to resist the allure of morning as I've had a rare settled night and have slept for at least 6 hours, which is luxury. I reach out and touch the soft skin of the Lovely G lying fast asleep beside me and lie for a moment or two connected by this touch before brushing a few strands of her thick black hair away from her face. I see her pout in her dreams and am content for several long minutes to just watch her sleep before gently easing myself out from under the covers and, collecting my clothes from the untidy, half-heartedly semi-folded pile at the side of the bed, make my way out to the hall where I head for the bathroom to get dressed and do the usual morning routine.

Heading down the stairs to the hall the light is soft through the gauze of the curtain at the foot of the stair until I fold it back and the light changes to a warmer hue. The birds are already out in force, seven or eight jackdaws strutting around beneath the apple trees until they see my shape at the window and they leap into the air and depart complaining loudly. The local sparrows who live in our back hedge are already busy with the remnants of yesterdays filling of feeders hanging on the two apple trees, excitedly clearing the way for the morning refill. I go through the door beside me into the kitchen and turn on the computer before filling the kettle and flicking the switch. Both will be ready for me by the time I'm finished with the birds. I pick up the large tub of birdseed with one hand as I roll open the patio door with the other and step out into the morning.

By the time I've taken my first step to cross the small patio towards the grass at the far side my bare feet have registered the depth of cold from the concrete slabs, a hint of night-time rain and a gossamer spider web. As I pass the small rough wooden bench table I put down the tub and a few steps on the chill of concrete changes for the soft dampness of grass, a refreshing cold rather than the hard cold of the patio behind me. I always smile when I do this. I love walking out here in my bare feet, almost regardless of the weather. I might be just a bit strange but as I walk to the first feeder with a small pot of seed to fill, I'm actually laughing quietly out loud, partly in exuberance and partly in expression of the shock of the cold on my toes. I go through my routine, filling one, two, three, four feeders and then I empty and wipe the two water dishes before refilling them with clean water and putting them back down, one on the small table where the seed tub is and one for the ground feeders which I leave at the edge of the patio. I pick up the seed tub and scatter a handful of seeds beside the newly filled water dish at my feet before walking back onto the grass and along the length of the house, past my neighbours softly clucking half dozen hens in their wire run through the slatted wooden fence. I pause there for a moment and we eye each other amiably as we do most mornings unless rain or wind forces us to concentrate only on the task at hand. This morning, bucket still in hand, I make them watch my impression of a chicken - nodding head, soft clucking, jerky movements - but can tell they're less than impressed. Nothing unusual there then.

Breakfast.

Beyond the hen run, at the end of the fence where our garden drops down a metre or so to the lowest part, I pass the plum trees and turn back around the front of the house away from the younger pear trees and walk across to my favourite part of the garden, the old pear tree which sits at the edge of the drive right in front of the house. I often wonder what changes this old tree has seen here over the last hundred years as it's watched the space change from orchard to building site to garden. Once it had many companions but now it's the last of its kind, solitary until two new trees were planted nearby. As I often do, I run a hand on its rough bark and pluck a few dry twigs from a branch here and there as I fill the feeder that hangs from the stout finger that's all that remains of a branch clipped by other hands perhaps generations ago. All around the garden here there is birdsong and eager squeaks and squawks from birds excited by the morning sun at the front of the house and the prospect of breakfast being laid out before them. I walk back across the lawn dropping yet another handful of seed by the stone pillar of the bird bath and stop to fill the two window feeders that are in front of the kitchen and the library.

The tree on the hill opposite.

I've spent more time out here this week than anytime so far this year, the garden is looking good - for me anyway - things that should have been gone a while back have been lifted and taken to be recycled or dumped and there is an air of order and control about the place. Grass is short, borders are neat and tidy, things are as things perhaps should be more often. I decide that the computer can wait until later and I'm going to bring my coffee round here to the sunshine. I'll sit on the step and be smug for a while and enjoy what may be the last bit of sun for a few days.
see you later.
listening to

A Grey Morning.......

Hullo ma wee blog,

There's a grey morning being freed from the remains of night-time as The lovely G and I set out for the journey to Dunbar and her train to Edinburgh this morning. The hedge along the drive dances as we pass by in a wind not far short of howling but the drive is uneventful except for the advance notice signs of roadworks that are going to slow us down over the next month being set up a mile from the village. We get to the station in good time and G, who has been away for a few days so this is her first day back at work, looks at me with an 'Oh God' kind of look on her face, knowing that work has piled up while she has been away yet she has a full day of appointments which won't allow her to make contact with anyone leaving messages for her unless she skips lunch to cram a few calls in. This is a frequent feature of her employment now it seems.

I leave her with a hug and a look that tries to say I sympathise with her and the struggle she is going to have today. We've arranged that I'll come and meet her to go to the cinema after work so hopefully that small thing will give her something to look forward to at the end of the day's slog. {I'll have to be careful not to do my usual falling asleep routine which has become such a feature of my middle aged cinema experience. That won't go down well if she's had a hard day yet it's me who nods off at the first opportunity.}

I stop at a local shop to buy my morning 'Hootsman' newspaper and some milk and head back home. The smoke from the chimney of the cement works is flat against the sky as I pass and looks like a rag stretched out by the wind. A thick grey streak nailed firmly at 90 degrees, it could have been drawn by a child. Towards Torness Power Station the view opens out and I see Grey, Grey, Grey: sky, sea and headland all merge and the road that takes me toward them all is as grey as the rest. I drive and think grey thoughts.

Taking the side road back to the village I come round a corner and see the matronly silhouette of a hen pheasant running across the road, skirts hitched to show her skinny legs. I catch sight of her just in time to hit the brakes but even so she takes to indignant wing to get completely out of the way and in my mind she departs with an unfairly disparaging view of my driving ability. That's life I suppose. I watch her leave and return my attention to the road, keeping a wary eye out for more of her kin by the foot of the hedges that line my route back home but thankfully no more local wildlife seems tempted to test my reflex versus braking distances and the rest of the journey is safely over a few minutes later.

The garden hedge is still dancing madly away when I pass by again and finally pull up at the side of the house. The light from the kitchen door looks inviting and I'm ready for a coffee as I close the car door behind me and step up to the patio door and into the warmth.

The morning is still grey but somehow, my mood no longer is.

see you later.

Listening to Lady Gaga 'Bad Romance' - which makes me think of this........

Breakfast and A Nice Wiff.....

Hullo ma wee blog,


Sunday breakfast. Coffee, croissants, unsalted butter, jam.

The lovely G is struggling with the jam lid and after much straining hands it to me to try and open. I try for a bit and exasperated go to the cupboard and get out another jar.

She then says "Mmmm, you should try this. It's got a lovely wiff!"

To which I reply, "No thanks, I already have one...."

Ta.....DAH!!!!!!!!

One thousand brownie points to me.

I thankyouverymuch.............

see you later.

Song of The Sea Wind

Hullo ma wee blog,

I step out of the sliding door and down to walk barefoot across the paved patio towards the grass and the apple trees. I'm carrying a large tub of bird seed and the start of my morning routine elicits excited chirps from unseen throats all around; on the house, from our neighbours roof and our garden shed, but most of all from the dense wall of uncut hedging at the far side of the back garden where I know there are several nests.

 As I stop at the low wooden bench that displays some potted plants to put down the tub and remove its stiff lid I'm buffeted by a warm and gossipy wind. It's brisk and breezy and full of energy as it moulds itself around me like the warm hug of an affectionate friend. It sings the song of the sea wind in my ear and it holds me for just a moment before rushing on with its tales of dancing white horses and the salt tang of seaweed and driftwood still fresh on its lips. It makes me pause and strain to hear the slap of distant waves at the cliff foot and the gentle rush of sea over sand and shell. It makes me inhale its perfume and consume its fragrance. I'm lost in its cadence for a moment before it leaves me breathless but smiling, like being held too tightly saying goodbye to a friend who has places to go and people to meet. Like any good friend it raises my spirits and I want more.

I return to my task and fill the plastic pot I keep inside the tub with seed, gold and flecked with the oily black of sunflower. I turn and step off the patio onto the grass and immediately I feel cool damp underfoot. There has been a silent shower during the warm night and I am given a delicious foot massage as I walk slowly, barefoot and smiling broadly, savouring every step, to the trees and the feeders, scattering the nights tears as I go. Self indulgently, I am in no rush and the excitement around me builds in a crescendo of eager voices and rustling wings as unseen watchers jostle for advantage in the greenery a few steps away. By the time I move to fill the second feeder the first is already greedily occupied, and a disorderly mob is forming on the nearby branches, the second similarly by the time I reach the third. I turn to walk away to replenish my pot for the last feeder which is in the oldest pear tree at the front of the house, scattering the last remnants of seed from my pot around me for those that prefer to ground feed. As I walk away the female blackbird swoops appreciatively past my legs in the rush to be first to the pick of the crop.

Pot filled, I walk around the side of the house keeping carefully to the massaging grassy carpet, wondering how great it would feel to take off my shirt and stretch out on cool grass to be stroked by the warm wind which has returned momentarily to this side of the house. I'm deep in thought when my neighbour calls me from the other side of the fence to ask if I would like some of the overproduction from his new hens. After only four weeks the output of his four hens is far outstripping demand and he explains that he and his wife will be happy to share some fresh eggs around the neighbours. As he rushes off to get me some eggs I fill the last feeder and return to the garden fence that separates us from the cottage. When he returns we spend some time chatting about this and that and he says that it looks like his fruit bushes are going to provide a bumper harvest of soft fruit. I too can see that we are going to have a substantial crop of apples, pears and plums as even our old pear tree is proudly hanging with young fruit and so without further ado we agree a communal aid plan which should meet most of our needs for soft fruit across the summer. To seal the bargain I carry away a dozen fresh eggs carefully held in the folded material of the front of my T-Shirt. What a wonderful morning.

 I put my stash of eggs into the cupboard and look forward to boiled eggs on toast for breakfast but decide that first I really have to pour myself a big glass of fresh orange juice and take it out into the garden where I will enjoy it as I slowly walk barefoot round and round the garden on that wonderful soft and gentle carpet of grass.

As I do so I can barely drink for smiling to myself in absolute pleasure. Walking barefoot on grass like this is one of my favourite things, yet I realise I do it so rarely, just like walking barefoot along the shoreline on soft sand with waves just lapping at my toes. I plan the day ahead as I walk and as I do I think of the song of the sea wind and decide that today will be the perfect day to walk the beach with my shoes in my hand. My feet begin to itch in anticipation of warm sand and ice cool water.

I reach for a towel to take with me. Breakfast can wait.

See you later




Listening to Leonard Cohen 'Dance me to the end of Love'

Whiskers at Dawn........

From the bedroom window.

Hullo ma wee blog,

A paw lands softly on my thigh. I look down from the laptop where I sit blogging away insomnia and am met by two huge luminous green eyes engaged in unblinking human contemplation in return. She is beside my chair here at the kitchen table, illuminated by the glow of the lamp which is the only light in the room. She stands on back legs, holding herself erect with her right paw against the chair seat, leaving the other to deliver a gentle tap to the top of my thigh which is feather soft  yet by its very softness, reminds me that there are claws behind it which can be deployed against tender flesh if needed.  The eyes narrow and a pair of whiskered white cheeks move as they funnel a quiet, soft and manipulative miaow in my direction as she repeats the movement, emphasised by a slight deepening of those same green eyes, an act which only seems to increase their concerned impact.

Jess has arrived. I left her sleeping beside The Lovely G a couple of hours ago when my twisting and turning threatened to wake them.  {experience has taught me that waking either of them in the middle of the night isn't a plan to be described as good.}

I murmur 'good morning' as I reach down and scratch behind her ears. Her head tilts against my palm and fingers with approval, turning and twisting to achieve the desired effect as we exchange greetings, her and I together for a mutually pleasant moment or two before I leave her and turn back to coffee and computer. She sits back down beside me and as I begin to type I wonder if she will head to the utility room a few yards away where I have already filled her bowls with food and fresh clean water.


Engrossed in what I am doing I'm startled when she appears sitting beside my elbow, a place and position she has reached in one with an impressive and silent leap. Not bad for an old lady. She contemplates me anew and surveys the content of my efforts. She's not in the least impressed and purrs a few suggested improvements in my direction, nudging my arm to hint that perhaps I should get started on them right away. As I obey she rubs an approving cheek against my bicep with her eyes fixed on the screen to make sure of typo-free amendments before resting her head on my shoulder as I carry on typing and reviewing, typing and correcting, in my stilted two handed, four/sometimes five/rarely six - fingered typing style. Approval is purred directly into my ear.

Job done she is bored now and stands to step over my right forearm into the circle of me and computer, standing full, obliterating my view and turning, tail raised, to show me proudly how clean her bottom is.

"Aye, very nice Jess! Lovely! Thanks for that."

She turns and repeats the maneuver from the opposite direction as if  to show the effect is the same from any angle before folding herself into a curled position with her back against my chest, stretched out from left to right round the support of my arms. She proceeds to raise a front paw and begin her morning ablutions by fastidiously running her teeth through the fur of her forearm and licking the tug free area back down to run in the right direction. She stops and looks at me for a second, not understanding or caring that this is not the best place she could be doing this - in my humble opinion. "After all," she seems to say,  "what could be better than writing about a cat - and you only ever see what's right under your nose!"

I continue to write, half-heartedly now as I watch her, engrossed in contortions to reach each and every recalcitrant hair, impressed by her methodology and feline thoroughness as she clears tugs and straightens hair, moving on to the next only when catty approval is reached after close inspection. I find myself wondering if she would be equally impressed with my own shower technique.

Probably not.......

I reach for my coffee to find it's cold. Time has moved on and dawn is softly pushing a hint of pale amber through the window at the end of the kitchen. I'm suddenly tired and Jess is looking expectantly at me once again. Even before I move for the light switch she is up and moves to sit at the door to hall and stairs. Her eyes turn to me once more as she steps aside to let me pass. As I take the stairs to the bedroom she is two steps behind. Somehow I know how a sheep feels being herded expertly towards its pen by a collie dog.

I know my place.

By the time I have shed my clothes and climbed quietly into bed beside my Lovely G,  Jess is already there, curled in a ball and apparently just as deeply asleep as when I left them a few hours ago.

Bloomin' cat!

You WILL obey me........

See you later.

Listening to;

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb........

That's what they say about March normally anyway.......

Hullo ma wee blog,

This mornings trip to Dunbar for the lovely G's train to work started earlier than normal, planned after last nights storm delayed return from work, taking into consideration the flooding already becoming problematic on the A1 past Torness power station at 7pm on the road home.

I listened to the hooligan wind screaming around the house last night from the warmth of bed thinking that I couldn't remember worse in the 8 years we have been here. I woke several times across the night yet wasn't tempted to follow my nocturnal habit, to head for the kitchen and night time comfort of coffee and blogging, happy for once to stay comfortably imprisoned by the several hundred banshees at the window and their howled demands to be let in. The wind kept me awake as the house creaked and groaned in her fight to keep us sheltered and my thoughts were swept in many directions but always, always came back to shrieking Mother Nature angrily demanding my attention. Jess, determinedly shouldered deeper into the duvet at our sides as she found her own ways of communing with sleep. Easy for a cat. The lovely G slept easily too. {I have often thought she may be part cat herself}. Eventually, as she does, sleep quietly claimed me and took me through to an early rise.

It was clear that things hadn't changed for the better as I peered out at the dark and the gloom this morning. Mother Nature still in angry voice, the trees in the garden shaking hard to loosen night from their shoulders, rain beating against the front of the house and, barely seen across the garden and drive, our enormous hedge swaying and twisting in the melee like some wild, threatening wall of malevolence straining to break free of the earth and launch itself in a suicidal charge at the house. I shuddered and made an unusual-for-me plan to head back to bed after the trip to the station, to seek comfort and solace in warmth for an hour or so. After all, I don't intend to spend much time out in that if I can avoid it.

By the time we were ready to leave for our journey, inky dark had turned hard grey, the added light doing nothing to make the scene beyond the window pane any more inviting. Suitably bundled in protective clothing we made eyes at each other as I opened the door and we stepped out to drive and car, immediately assaulted by a face full of wind and rain that stung and took the breath away, sharp intake of icy cold and a wince at stinging cheeks, loud exclamations as we slammed car doors shut against the reality of the day.

We ploughed through the flooded bottom of the drive and emerged onto the rain and wind scoured road, were blown up the hill and out of the village, the sea barely discernible from my favourite viewpoint on the crest of the hill. The car was being buffeted like I have never felt before. You see programmes on extreme weather on TV and this could have had its own slot. The A1, as we joined it, was eerily quiet and I immediately thought that a mile or so ahead we would be faced with blue lights and barricades closing off the section of the road most prone to flooding by muddy water off the fields on either side of the road, as it sometimes is, but surprisingly as I coaxed the car on we met nothing like that. The road which I fully expected to be 'hoodlum' with water was difficult for sure, but passable with care, the road in that section thankfully sheltered from the worst of the wind. The car continued to be pounded by wind and water as we drove on and at times I thought I was actually in a boat, the way the car was pitching. I have never driven in conditions like we met on the most exposed mile or two along the coast, and found myself thinking of lorry drivers until I looked at the sea in the increasing light. It was literally almost indescribable in its violence and seeming intention to wipe the land from its face. Normally this is a placid coast, but sea anywhere can be vicious at times. I thought I had seen all its faces until this morning. It was truly frightening and I uttered an ' Oh my God' to the lovely G beside me and turned my thoughts to any out at sea in that terrible storm and for the lifeboatmen who are a treasured part of our communities hereabouts.

The radio told of countrywide storms, lorries jack-knifed and overturned, multiple accidents, roads closed through flood and fallen trees, of snow so heavy that power lines had come down across Northern Ireland as we carried carefully on our way through roads unusually quiet of traffic, our headlights probing the gloom to show sparkling rain blown horizontally across our path or crashingly head on into the windscreen. A morning of biblical proportion. I dropped G off at the station to find cancelled trains replaced by emergency bus services which would considerably lengthen her journey to work. Despite an offer to drive her on to Edinburgh I was dispatched homeward with a kiss and a 'thanks for getting me here'. A stop for my morning 'Hootsman' newspaper saw me bent almost double in the wind tunnel of Dunbar main street, battered by rain between shop and car. The return journey as eventful as before with the wind at my back occasionally threatening to jolt me into oncoming traffic, or so it seemed, until I turned once more up the drive to the house and its comfortable warmth and companionable cat sitting patiently at the french doors looking askance at the lack of birdlife so necessary for a felines perfect contemplation of day.

As I stepped from the car I lowered my head against the wind for the few steps to sanctuary and received a final benediction of driven rain turned sleet on the top of my head.

March......

In like a lamb and out like a lion more like.......

So much for day four of 'British summer time'
Brrrr!!

See you later.

Listening to - the kettle boil so I can thaw out.

It's a beautiful day...........

Hullo ma wee blog,

It's a beautiful day. This mornings drive to Dunbar station with The Lovely G was the first time this year I had not used lights on the car for the journey. Although it was a nose tingling -2C, and with a wind behind it making it feel even more biting, the sky was clear and pastel blue. Once the car had heated up you could almost imagine that it was a summers morning, with the exception of the trees all around being bare of leaves.

After dropping G at the station I took time, on the spur of the moment, to go down to the harbour and spend just a few moments walking round and enjoying the light and the air, despite the cold reminding me just how spur of the jacketless moment it had really been. Despite that, the view all the way across the estuary to a sunny Fife coastline and the fantastic colour of the castle ruins, red in the rising sun, was almost as invigorating as the lack of temperature, with a pale blue sea set underneath that pastel sky and the gentlest of swells moving the surface. I watched some seabirds afloat near the harbour walls before turning, envious of their complete disregard for the cold, taking a deep breath of icy air and heading briskly back to the car and its retained warmth. I felt almost purified, but that might just have been icicles in the brain.

By the time I had turned onto the A1 again for the drive home, my shivering had stopped and body temperature had reached a more comfortable sense of proportion. I was able once more to appreciate what a fantastic start to March we've been given. The snows of February easily forgotten, I felt like it was the first time this year that I could really see the green of the grass in roadside fields, notice that sometime recently a farmer must have created a newly ploughed field of red Dunbar earth, and how little left of the winter feed the herds of sheep had left to them in stubble strewn pastures near the village. As the car climbed over the crest of the hill at the edge of the village, a few hardy, but well insulated, souls were completing the obligatory early morning walking of winter wrapped dogs. As I pulled past them into the drive and scrunched across ice covered puddles I was already thinking of coffee and remembered with an eager smile, the two large croissants left from Sundays solitary breakfast. That will do very nicely, thank you very much.

It's a beautiful day......

see you later.

listening to Mott The Hoople 'All the Young Dudes'

Ruler of All I Survey............

Hullo ma wee blog,

I'm here at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, having dropped off the lovely G at Dunbar station for her usual morning train. Instead of heading off to work as normal though, she is heading on out to the airport for a weekend at her aunts house in Switzerland as her aunt is currently laid up after an operation to her foot. This means I have the weekend to myself and I am therefore ' master of my own destiny' for a couple of days.

So after coffee and breakfast I will be heading off across country to Irvine and my solicitor brother to help him with some important research. There has been a small micro brewery opened up near him and its critical that they get some product testing done and some feedback on the quality of their merchandise.

Tough job but someone's got to do it.

see you later.

Listening to Suzanne Vega 'My name is Luca'

Beautiful She sleeps.........

Hullo ma wee blog,


I stretch slowly as my eyes open, enjoying the feel as muscle slowly tightens to push nights sleep away. Dawn is come and the lovely G is warm beside me. Beautiful she sleeps, her face is perfect peace. Hair, tousled and spread around her, billows softly across jaw and pillow. Beneath, closed eyes stretch long lashes down to kiss her cheek. I gaze in awe at a face so comfortingly familiar yet so exciting and can't resist the urge to reach and push a stray hair from her face. Still sleeping, she frowns and her expression turns soft pout, the gentlest of breathy whimpers crosses her dreaming lips. A hand comes up to touch her nose and, drained of energy, is left beside her face. She shrugs covers closer around her, her other hand touches mine and clasps me instinctively. Connected, I lay perfectly still, watching and content. Smiling, as beautiful, she sleeps.

see you later

Routine/Habit - Familiar/Unfamiliar

Hullo ma wee blog,

6.00am this morning: I had been awake for a while, not long but maybe 10 minutes. Instinctively, still half asleep I had been yawning and stretching under the covers, rubbing my eyes and wiping the palm of my hands from forehead to chin as I stroked myself out of sleep. Having gone to bed at 2.00am, that's not bad for me but the lovely G, facing her 6th day at work this week and still struggling to contain a cold that has dogged her across most of the preceding week turned to me and said,

"Please, get up. Give me just another 15 minutes of peace before I have to get up too."

Aware now of my inconsiderate behaviour I apologised and got out of bed straight away and went out to the hall where I dressed, groggily and oddly in the dark, stuck bare feet into slippers before heading down to the kitchen where I pressed the on switch of the laptop on my way to kettle and coffee. A fill of the kettle and a wander back to the laptop to tap in the password meant that by the time I returned to my familiar chair at the kitchen table, in the corner by the patio door, coffee cup in hand I was ready to switch on my morning radio station and go to the blog dashboard to see who had posted overnight or if anyone had dropped a comment to be published.

In the next few minutes I followed whats become pretty much my morning routine of blog checking, saying hello to Jess and making a fuss for a moment or two, of changing the litter tray and checking food and water are there and taking milk and butter from the fridge in preparation for breakfast porage or whatever takes my fancy from our stock of cereal. All totally mundane and familiar to many millions nae doubt. I often find I have done something, often very ordinary, but cant for the life of me remember doing it. Tidying up that scattered post, putting that dish in the dishwasher or even driving that last 5 miles to home. All done perfectly well and safely but without conscious thought.

And so I found myself here having done several of those things {except driving home I hastily add} this morning but not having realised it until I reminded myself to go and feed the cat only to find the bowl washed and refilled and Jess turning from her breakfast with a quizzical look over her shoulder. I smiled and considered old age, senility and kinsthetics and turned ruefully back to kettle and coffee.


Later, having dropped the lovely G at Dunbar station I again found myself pulling into a parking space at the bottom of the high street as I wanted to get some rolls and butter at a local shop. I had found myself coming around the corner and immediately checking for one particular parking space, then on seeing it taken, searching for another, but very particular, place. I realised that I have favourite parking spaces! And a pecking order of favourite parking spaces! And in an almost deserted street {at that time of a Saturday morning}. As I stepped out of the car another of those odd things happened to me.


Have you ever found yourself in a familiar place and yet, even knowing it should be familiar, feeling like its brand new, the very first time you have ever been there and that like the first time in a new place you are keen to experience it, to become familiar, and have a heightened awareness of the place somehow. { You probably think I'm nuts. I'm not explaining this very well.}

The first time I remember experiencing it was as a small child walking back home from Grans house through the village. It was night but not very late as I was young, Gordon, my older brother was with me, and we were walking the route back home that we always took, just a simple five minute walk. The path and road were frosted and glistening in the street lights, car windows and lights frosting over and the whole scene indelibly etched in my memory was that it was all new. Never before had I experienced that walk. Every familiar house and garden gate, every turn and distance between lit lampposts was totally new and yet that didn't mean I felt anxious. I was enthralled. I wanted to linger, recognising that this should all be normal to me and yet wasn't. I wanted to stay and enjoy the sensation of feeling dislocated in my own surroundings. Misplaced and exhilarated in equal measure.

Over the years I have experienced the same feeling perhaps only ten times and every time takes me back to that first frosty walk down the hill to home. Today as I got out of the car in a dark Dunbar high street, noise muffled by a the kind of feather light drizzle that we call 'smirr' in Scotland I knew before I raised my head to stand up that I was in that place again. I stood all grown up at the side of my car and experienced Dunbar in the morning smirr like I was 7 or 8 years old and it was all brand new. Amazing, wondrous and unexpected. I walked slowly to the foot of the high street and looked up its length, standing for several minutes just drinking it in and hoping that the feeling wouldn't change. As I walked towards the shop where I knew I had intended going the feeling stayed with me and I walked on enjoying the sensation, the connection and the peace that I always feel in that experience.

A 50 year old wee boy just walking up a new street in the smirr. Deep in thought and comfortably lost in feeling.

And it was.......Braw.

see you later.....

Where day and night split

Hullo ma wee blog,

My lovely G is just behind me as I step from the house out into the drive and unlock the car for the short 10 minute trip to Dunbar and her morning train to Edinburgh and work.

Just a normal day.

The wind had been loud and loutish during the night with some periods threatening to reach so far into my consciousness as to wake me thoroughly but thankfully stopping at just being a reminder it was there. But by 4.30 I was awake for the day and, as there is no point in me staying to harrumph and wake the lovely G with my tossing and turning, I followed my habit and got up to head for the kitchen and my chair at the table in the corner by the patio doors. The wind, decreased in volume, was still hard to ignore through the double glazing of the doors and windows. Early reports on the radio were full of dire stories of heavy rainstorms and flooding further south and west and a sad report of a policeman missing when a bridge collapsed while evacuating folks from some of the rural areas worst affected. Cockermouth on the Cumbrian coast, a town we know quite well from previous visits, appears to be at the center of the worst weather and has had 12 inches of rain in 24hrs, the worst since records began.

The first thing I notice on opening the car for us is that the morning is warmer than over the last few weeks and the sky has an incredible feel to it this morning. Its deep with colour and still night to all intents, an inky dark brooding mass of seething cloud.

As we head off down the driveway and on to the road out of the village and turn towards Dunbar we change direction and at the top of the hill the first hint of real dawn is threatening to follow the slim slit of grey and pale gold showing on the horizon way off out into the North Sea. A few minutes later and clouds appear in the increasing light away on my right, out across the water beyond Torness power station. A long line of low cloud almost the visible length of the estuary, it looks like something a child would paint on a picture of seascape, not quite real somehow,with a clear but dark sky above, but its there none the less. As we move on I am thinking about those clouds, how unusual they look and it occurs to me that they look like they are parched and hungrily sucking up sustenance from the sea close below, perhaps to replace what they unloaded on the land during the night, but urgently, before they are noticed and chased away by the wind coming in off the water.

The radio leads us through the inane chatterings of a changeover of DJ's and by the time that's over we are reaching the outskirts of Dunbar with its dark grey roads glistening iron hard and slick with last nights rain. The light now is perhaps my favourite time to drive; neither dark or light and the headlights having no apparent visible effect on the road ahead, but a marker to see and be seen by. Its a time that lasts only for a few precious miles in the morning or evening. A time to be savoured, at least by me. This is the time for the deer, the fox and the morning birds, the hare and the heron, with the last of the predators gone or going and the stragglers of nights life anxious to be away out of sight.

Each morning, the station gives me the opportunity for a curmudgeonly tut at some hopeless driver, holding up the rest of us with his inability to find an out of the way location to disgorge his passengers or for a thoughtless pedestrian stepping into harms way. And of course lets not forget that sleepy cyclist with the death wish and no lights. Perhaps its the horn blowing that is his real alarm call. One of these days one of us is not going to stop in time, I guarantee it.

Soon G is is gone from my side leaving the memory of a kiss lingering on my lips and a breathless "see you later" to prepare me properly for the day ahead. I turn about to retrace the road back to the A1 and home, past Cromwells camp site and the battle stane memorial to that sair fecht in 1650. I think its incredible that the battles of 1296 and 1650 took place on pretty much the same piece of land and with the same auld enemy. It seems to me they sit like quotation marks either side of the start and end of Scotlands forlorn fight for Independence.

As I drive past the stone, sitting hump-backed and largely ignored by the side of the road, the night colours are still solidly there on my right out the window and on my left the steel grey of day has charged up with the wind. Somewhere above me is where day and night split. Night still clings on by the fingertips but soon it will be gone, chased beyond the horizon by the cloudy battalions of dawn to regroup, re-arm, and reappear.

See you later.........

Listening to Mike Oldfield ' Five Miles Out'

A Plethera of Postings.......

Hullo there ma wee blog,

5.30am and the day starts with a solitary coffee in my usual place at the kitchen table. The kitchen is cold and a vicious wind whips round the corner of the house behind the patio doors a few feet from my chair. Bailey cat has already demanded release from the house and been sucked into the garden through the same patio door opened just enough to let her through. No doubt she will be back once her ablutions are done, wide eyed and fur puffed against the cold, and probably with an accusatory air about her too. That's cats for you.

As usual I open my laptop and crank it up as I wait for the water to boil. Once connected I set the radio to play my favourite station, all talk with just a little music at this time of the day, and return to my home page. I have a gadget there which shows me the traffic situation across Scotland and also give a rundown of how long the delays are in miles and minutes. I see that there is pretty much a clear road network. Not surprising at this time of day but it still prompts me to say out loud a line from one of my favourite films, 'Comfort and Joy' by Bill Forsyth.

"Its Dickie Bird on the breakfast show. Traffic is clear across west central Scotland so if you leave now you will have a clear run to work. You'll be three hours early but what the heck!"

I go to the blog dashboard and there are two comment waiting for me thanks to Scudder and Mornings Minion, two regular contributors, and I publish them without checking the content as I will pick them up eagerly in a moment when I have that cup of coffee that's calling to me. Cup in hand I return and sit down again and also check if any of my favourite blogs have published anything and find a veritable plethora of postings.

My day begins with a smile and the knowledge of a pleasurable hour ahead.

Cheers, one and all.......

see you later.

Listening to the 'Dawn Patrol' on BBC radio2