Month: December 2019

Choose righteousness before happiness, comfort, prosperity, fulfilment, health, and personal need. Tuesday, December 17. We took a final walk alongside The Meadows, bought Christmas presents at a memorabilia shop nearby, and procured pastries before returning to our accommodation to retrieve belongings. From there we climbed and descended the streets (taking in the pulled-pork sandwich emporium) to Edinburgh Waverley station. The…

9.30 am: Late breakfast. 10.15 am: Onto the cold sunlit streets towards Holyrood and Arthur’s Seat via Greyfriars Kirkyard (again): We noticed on the upper-wall of a shop overlooking the yard: ‘Harvey’s Furniture Store’. ‘It’s a sign!’, I exclaimed. A faultless deduction on one level: From there, via a coffee shop that sold a very decent fruit scone, we headed…

9.00 pm: Late rise. What the heck! Strange kitchen. ‘How do you turn the oven on? Is there a non-stick saucepan for our porridge (which is now promoted as a post-election blues upper)?’ Washed-up, booked dinner, scouted for churches in advance of tomorrow. 10.45am: Out onto the streets. The Park Run was underway on The Meadows. First stop: the knittery:…

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Breath goes forth, he returned to his earth; in that very day (Psalm 146.3–5). The most dispiriting outcome of this election has been the unalloyed outbursts on social media: rank triumphalism, on the part of some of the victors, and vindictiveness and…

7.30 am: ‘Get breakfast done!’. 8.30 am: The big day. The world reflected in the still pools of rain: I passed the Polling Station on Stanley Road; business was already brisk. 9.00 am: A Skype tutorial with one of my ‘distance-learning’ PhD fine art student: We talked about, among other things: Donald Judd’s way of speaking about his work in…

8.15 am: A communion. 8.40 am: An unusual and foreboding sky – a dark-light – covered the seaward side of the town. The day looked like it was ending even as it began. Was this a portent of an unsettled period ahead in the national psyche. I recalled how, prior to the English Civil War, many people experienced collective visions…

8.40 am: Into inclemency, as it were; the rain drove under my umbrella; the wind pushed me backward down Llanbadarn Road. The Old College’s West Classroom was quieter in the storm than it ever had been, now that the windows are sealed with Perspex. I tried to return a doctor’s call regarding my blood tests, but to no avail. One…