Tag: Tom McCulloch

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To Barra

5 hours from Oban on a Calmac ferry that reminds me of a sports centre c. 1987. But there’s still a romance about ferries. I love them. Until I’m doing the Buster Keaton stagger with my lunch in my throat. A small fortune could have bought us plane tickets. There’s romance in the turbo-prop too; […] Read More →
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Guernica in the clouds

A large envelope in the post.   Unexpected. Like the start of a story. I open it, a letter from my aunt. She’s just finished reading the enclosed manuscript. Found in a box maybe, that’s what happens. An attic, dust through beams of skylight.   Did I put the box here and forget or did I never […] Read More →
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Guns on the High Moor

The pull of the Himalayas, the Alps, high peaks of all the world, I get it. It’s the all-conquering stuff I don’t. Man against nature. A world for wannabe Bears. Grylls that is. What a weird conceit. Imagine telling Basho you’d ‘conquered’ a mountain. A roar of laughter, sake everywhere. Or John Muir. Biting his […] Read More →
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Frogs in the mist

Neil Gunn. James Robertson’s impressive Neil Gunn Memorial Lecture takes me back. To Highland River, The Atom of Delight, The Well at the World’s End… When I think of Gunn I always think of Zen. It came to meet him in the Highlands. An interconnected wholeness. No self. You’d expect it more atop a Japanese […] Read More →