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Tangasdale beach

marram grass blowing in the wind with fine pale sand beyond

The forewaves run to and from each other, lapping and overlapping in little rippling frills. The sand shelves steeply in a concave curve so that the waves running shorewards rebound diagonally, criss-crossing back through the incoming waves in a series of interlocking diamonds.

Occasionally simultaneous groups of wavelets collide, stop moving, and then fibrillate for a few moments, like a thousand tiny hands upwaving. My chest flutters tremulously in tandem. It’s unbelievably beautiful. And the delights don’t end. Just a few paces further along the beach, a slim freshwater channel is carved in the sand and, as waves flow in over its outgoing stream, their rims curl gently under it, as if they’re cradling the stream, folding themselves around it in light white rolls of froth.

Beyond this channel the sea spreads thinly over a shallow sandbar, swelling out roundly and withdrawing, leaving a trailing edge of lacy bubbles, like a delicate shawl being strewn out and slowly gathered in. Like my heart being strewn out and slowly gathered in, and returned to me, carefully washed and intricately sewn.

Tangasdale beach, Barra, Western Isles / Barraigh, Eilean Siar, Scotland
13th August 2016

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sunset

sun and shadow of window frame on stretched skin of vertically mounted taiko

slow beats in the slow sunset
warm sticks held in heated hands

Pontycymer, Glamorgan, South Wales
7th July 2016

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Queen’s Park

A frost meadow lies between the spreading oak trees and the slim birches, great palmfuls of leaves papering over the dew-sharpened blades, each of which is itself furred by myriad tiny hairs of frost, glittering in the first light, sun upon sword upon sward.

frosted oak leaf held in shadows of frosted blades of grass all gently illuminated by pale low sunshine

Queen’s Park, Glasgow, Scotland
23rd February 2016

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the wee things

It’s the wee things, always the wee things. Whether in the middle of the daily routine or swept up in a great adventure, it’s the small gesture which catches us and which somehow, surprisingly, completes.

On the moortop, the stretching views and snow-struck hills are focused into the tiny buffeting of a small white downy feather caught in the yellowed grass. On the sea, the rough grace of the Minch is collected into the handful of froth thrown up by a rogue wave slapping us broadside, which catches the sun before it falls, making a momentary rainbow.

Beauty blooms so quickly.

Cwm Garw, Glamorgan, South Wales / The Minch, north-west Scotland
11th February 2016

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hogmanay

It was an awkward night. I didn’t know anyone in the hotel bar so I propped myself up against it and drank Glenkinchies a little too quickly while trying to make conversation with the karaoke singers when they came for refills. Midnight finally arrived with free drams and cubes of tablet and, after shaking hands with enough strangers, I went outside.

The moon hung above the eastern arm of the town like an old lamp, huge and half-lidded, kept company by a few tiny white stars. Bulging black waves banged heavily at the harbour wall beside me, their hefty slap reverberating round the deep indent of the bay. And I felt like the stars, far and high and distant from the glad swelling tides in the bar; and cold in this country that I thought was my home.

Millport, Cumbrae
1st January 2016

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the box of delights

The internet is my box of delights. Today I opened an advent calendar story about a handmade angel on the top of a Christmas tree. I found a turfed roundhouse to buy in a wooded Welsh valley. I discovered that Switzerland is holding a referendum on stopping banks controlling the money supply. I saw taiko drumming in the golden haze of dim London lamps. I wrote to friends and recalled shared memories. I remembered other times. I imagined other times. I glimpsed other places.

And all while I sat here at a small stained table in our unheated and unfinished upstairs room, quietly warmed by bright wavelengths of electronic light and the variousness of the world, until I closed the laptop lid and carried it away. Such a portable portal. What will it open next?

Pontycymer, Glamorgan, South Wales
12th December 2015