This Time From Scotland
Posted 1st July 2026
Category: Chit-Chat Genres: N/A
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As I try to get myself back into the swing of being myself again following the massive life change I’ve gone through the last several months, I’m feeling ever more drawn to write this blog again. It’s not like I ever stopped feeling that way – I stopped writing because running an indie podcast takes a phenomenal amount of time if you want the content to be snappy – but right now it feels particularly accessible and obviously easier, less daunting, and there’s something about having a place to write, albeit it on a specific subject (which limits you) that podcasting can’t match in the same way, happy though it makes me. I’ve also come to realise that the idea that I’ve lost the skill isn’t correct – it feels that way but actually what I’ve lost is my belief in myself and I could do with getting that back.
I have effectively mostly said goodbye to Austen country to say hello to Robert Burns country; I need to explore his work more as if I do find I like it, there’s a lot more of Burns in Dumfries than there is Austen in Hampshire, even Chawton (yes!). Besides Burns’ house and the mausoleum, there is the Centre, statues of Burns and his wife, Jean Armour (separate statues in different places at that), multiple pubs and shops with imagery or straight-out history, and poetry in various places in town. It took 3 visits for me to realise the pavement around the bandstand at a park boasted a poem, it was so unexpected. And near Dumfries there’s another Burns house. (And all this as well as history that relates to Robert the Bruce and William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charlie and a Taj Mahal-esque abbey – the town is as run down as the residents will tell you but the history is fantastic.)
Since the latter months of last year my reading has been minimal but I’m starting to get back on track. I finished Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare in May. It took me two months but I got it done. I dabbled in Marian Keyes’ Grown Ups which didn’t stick, Sarah Moss’s Summerwater which is nice but not quite right for me right now – the irony that it’s set in Scotland at solstice isn’t lost on me – but what is sticking is Phoebe McIntosh’s Dominoes. That one was a strange but understandable journey – I saw a McIntosh in a local church’s graveyard (the big, red stone monuments in Scotland are still a novelty to me and very grand) and it reminded me I had never got to Phoebe’s book… which made me get wistful about the hardback I have in my storage unit back home before, a few days later, I remembered I have an ecopy on my reader. Belated thanks again to Andrew Blackman – it’s a good read.
This is draft two of this post. The first yapped on about what I was reading and it didn’t feel right – I’ve left some books out of this draft. I’m also letting this post be easy and mundane, just something with some life, some energy, in it, and a primary purpose of putting a few words on a blank page; I’m going to smile to myself after I publish it. I might dance around the room a bit and get excited when the man that undeniably caused all this comes home and asks me about my day. Whoever first said moving is one of the biggest life stressors was right. So is upending your entire life. I have a feeling that if I’m writing, I’ll get through it.
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