Blether
The writing side of the kist: Scottish history nobody teaches you, words we have stopped using, customs that quietly vanished, and whatever has annoyed me this week. All of it lives over on Substack, so the full pieces are there and the comments are there with them.
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A&E Doesn't Do Thank Yous. Here's One Anyway.
He turned twelve the day before, spent the first day of his tattie holidays in A&E, and came out mended and laughing. Busy, kind staff, getting the job done. I will not hear a word against them.
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Orange Lorry Stolen. Can Be Seen From the Moon.
Somebody drove off with twenty-two tonnes of Irn-Bru in the brightest wagon in Britain, and Police Scotland want you to look out for a suspicious amount of it.
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Born Into the Peace, Killed in the War
He was born eighteen days after the First World War ended. He was killed in the second.
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The Medals in the Drawer
A wee brown box, a war grave in Tuscany, and a name nobody in the family has said out loud.
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The Tattie Holidays: When the Bairns Got Two Weeks Off to Work
Every October, Scottish schools shut for a fortnight. And the reason isn't rest. It's potatoes.
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The Highland Midgie: Scotland's Most Hated Inhabitant
Two millimetres of pure spite. It lives here, it waits for the worst weather, and it strikes at dusk. And we've built a whole industry round escaping it.