Blog Archives

Finca Banega

Today John Simmons and Stuart Delves are in Spain with the Dark Angels advanced group and I’m preparing to leave for Hyderabad in the morning. It has been a strange day, knowing they’re there in that beautiful place, basking in … Continue reading →

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The bridge

Two weeks ago I learnt that my former next-door neighbour, Ian, had committed suicide. He was 50 and he had fought alcohol all his adult life. Yesterday I went to his funeral. During the seven years we shared a garden … Continue reading →

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Rebel talk

Intervention. Usually, it’s what takes place between people arguing or fighting. We intervene to stop things getting worse. Perhaps, then, it’s not so odd that it’s a word used so frequently by health professionals. A medical intervention. A surgical intervention. … Continue reading →

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Heat, dust and truth

We took off from Jodhpur at 2.45pm on Tuesday and climbed, rather slowly it seemed, over the Rajasthani desert on the first leg of our journey home to Scotland. After fifteen minutes, and five thousand feet at best, there came … Continue reading →

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The train now arriving …

4.30 am. After five days in the mountains we have spent the last seven hours trying to snatch sleep as the train rattles and sways down from the north. Now a lady with a singsong voice and cut-glass diction comes … Continue reading →

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Indian autumn

It’s one of the great clichés of travel-writing that India is an assault on the senses, but stepping outside the terminal building at Delhi airport, I’m lost for any other way to describe the experience of arriving in the sub-continent. … Continue reading →

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A ticklish matter

I met my first grandchild on Tuesday. She was four-and-a-bit days old. It also happened to be my sixtieth birthday. What a birthday present. It won’t be too long, I expect, before she discovers that she is quisquillosa. This is … Continue reading →

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The rain in Spain

I’m on the train to catch a plane to fly to Spain where the rain, I hope, stays mainly on the plain. We, the Dark Angels, will be in the mountains of Andalucia – where fellow writer John Simmons and … Continue reading →

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Cherish the stories

There’s a wise storyteller called David Campbell who cuts a distinctive figure about Edinburgh with his kilt and ponytail. ‘Story is the lifeline of human consciousness,’ says David. ‘Stories do not argue. They speak to the heart.’ Smart organisations have … Continue reading →

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Human capital

I’m a latecomer to the superbly written White House drama series, The West Wing. In the first series, the deputy chief of staff meets with a black senator who wants the government to start making reparation for slavery. As their … Continue reading →

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