(After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

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Northern/Central Portugal. January, 2020.

I have always covered distance, at least since I was eight and our first long drive up to Orkney from the flatlands of Lincolnshire, the only home I had known before this. Covering distance is not simply a matter of miles or kilometres, it is also time. Time and space combine in a journey, weave through one another until a whole is achieved, wrapped in an ongoing, continuous spiral of things seen. First this side, then the other, then above, below, in front, behind. The faster the speed, the more complex this weave becomes, the more gaps appear.

On that first journey north, back in the mists of time, when the world was still young and I was too, I caught my first glimpse of an oystercatcher. It was dead, on a road in the far north close to where the MV St. Ola would carry us across the Pentland Firth, white and black feathers a monochrome backing for the blaze of sudden orange on its beak and legs. Since then, I have seen several other firsts in an equally macabre fashion. My first badger. Dead. My first polecat, dead.

These thrills of recognition are always tempered by the simple fact of the death itself. I remember reading once that seeing dead badgers on a road is a good sign (or, at least, as good as any roadkill can be), as it suggests a healthy population with wide-ranging youngsters who do not yet know the dangers of a road. Personally, I’d prefer it without any cars or fast roads, a view which often raises eyebrows and incites laughter. Yet, look back just one hundred years, and our roads were still mostly unready and unpaved for the automobile. There may well come a time yet when this is once more the case.

Many of the roads I have seen in the last few weeks seem to still be in a permanent state of unreadiness. Strips of land clinging to the side of a precipitous hill, or following a seemingly tortuous route through valley bottoms, mirroring the watercourse beside. These roads, these hints of roads, here in Portugal, were not made for cars, as they were not in many places across Europe. These roads are old. They remember the cart, the horse, the donkey, the tread of the sheep and their attendants, the vagabond, the roamer, the man-of-the-road.

This week I saw another first, a common genet (Genetta genetta). Crushed into a small rug, markings clear, tail obvious. It was thrill and sadness combined. My chances of seeing one alive in the wild are slim, they are nocturnal and very secretive, but I not only place myself in locations and positions where I increase those chances, I am also lucky. Badgers, polecats, pine martens, Scottish wildcat, the howls and tracks of European wolves—I’ve been lucky with them all. Luck is something strangely important—it does not really exist, but I am sure you know others with either an excess or a dearth?

Roll dice and I will consistently score higher than average. Turn cards and it is the same. I cannot control this, but I can listen to it, learn when I am nudged into something, when a turn of a road takes us into a village or town which feels right.

On this journey, I am listening to luck, or the universe, or nature, or whatever you call it. Feelings—gut feelings—in our world today, we too often fail to listen to these, at our peril.

I am listening.

Finally

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Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

At the time, I thought this a great idea, and set myself the challenge of doing likewise once I reached the semi-mystical age of 49 years. Since, I have been keeping notes on this and, a few weeks after my birthday, it’s time to share my own list, in no particular order. (Note: I’d originally intended to do similarly to Sarah, a note listing things but then, as I kept my list of ideas, it turned into an obvious post.)

I try not to include anything too universally admired (it’s hard, though, and I’ve sneakily snuck some of those smells into others below. There’s no petrichor, though, which is a shame).

Before we begin with my own, here’s Sarah’s excellent list, with a frankly fantastic photograph (I’ve illustrated my own piece with photos of my own, linking to some of the scents I’ve shared):

Finally, before we begin, I’m not including any scents deemed too adult by nature, as I know some of you might not appreciate that (also, my Mum reads this, hi Mum!). I’ll let your own imaginations fill in the blanks on these. Blimey! Your head went there?! (Shut up, Alex—Ed.)

(This post might be cut short in some email clients, so do make sure you read it all!)

The List. 49(+) Favourite Scents.

1. The scent of webbing straps left out in the forest. For example, those of my hammock and that of my wildlife trail camera. They absorb something of the spirit of a tree, something not quite bark, nor moss, but beyond both.

2. Similar to this, the scent of my principal tarp, the one I used for my extended stays out in the woods. It is rich in campfire notes, with hints of the forest itself, rain, sun, wind, cold and heat, falling leaves and fragments of lichen. Made from a sort of poly cotton, over the years the material has become something else, grown into a Thing, with a scent of its own.

3. The particular smell of knapping and abrading a flint. I think I prefer this to the scent derived from striking a light from a flint, but that is also delicious.

4. The dark rocks of the cove by Little Burrageo in Deerness, when there has been sunshine for three days and little wind. A rare phenomenon in Orkney, this warms them and traps and distills the sea and land and, particularly, the coast into one distinctive smell. It has top notes of crumbling sandstone, iodine, and salt, with a rich body derived from the more volcanic, harder rock. Other places on the same coast don’t quite capture the same depth of scent and, when I lived near there, if they did have the scent, it would have been lost beneath tonnes of guano from the tens of thousands of seabirds who used to nest there. Last time I visited in spring, those cliffs lay comparatively silent, many of the birds dead or gone northward.

5. Evening, night-blooming jasmine, and frangipani, after a hot tropical day. Before the night mosquitoes appear in force, but as the day ones are going to bed.

6. Old books, obviously but, to make it a little more personal, I’ll be a touch more specific—the scent of a particular journal, once a chunky ledger for a company back in the 1800s, a company who only filled in five pages of 2000+, before abandoning that ledger. Now, it has been passed to me and, every time I open her, the scent is transporting. And, if I’m honest, a little off-putting. I want to use her pages, fill her in some way, but I’ve yet to quite learn how and I find the ancient smell akin to an elderly mystic sitting silently and peacefully, yet somehow also judging me.

7. Tulsi I’ve grown, harvested, and dried myself. Particularly Ethiopian tulsi. It is a bit tutti-frutti, a bit sharp, a bit wonderful, all its own thing.

8. Otter spraint, or poop. Yeah, I know, but to smell this as you walk a river or a coast is one of those times where the nose can sometimes confirm an animal before the other senses, and I love that. (See also—the scent of deer in a thick wood, but not the scent of wild boar, despite being an awesome thing, knowing they’re hiding up in that thicket, on that ridge, just from smell alone—it ain’t as nice as deer—and neither can touch the otter poop for sheer sort-of-jasmine nose joy.)

9. Givenchy Very Irresistible For Men. My go-to scent back in the mid 2000s through to the early 2010s, criminally deleted by the company, it fit me and my skin so well. Somewhat chocolatey, although the middle notes are actually coffee and sesame. Top notes included mint and grapefruit, with a base of Virginia cedar and hazelnut. Absolutely my favourite manufactured perfume for men, hands-down, and I mourn its loss still. (Honourable mention over the years for Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme, and [vintage] Burberry Men [and, to a lesser extent, vintage Burberry Weekend for summer.]) These days, I wear nothing, have no added scent—I even use a simple, scentless, solid deodorant. I’m not even comfortable with too strong an odour from washing liquid—probably all due to AuDHD. If I find a scent I love, that’s different (oh! for the day my unanswered pleas to Givenchy are met!), but I ain’t spraying myself in something mediocre.

10. One particular green, Thai balm, used for all sorts of things, including mosquito bites, for example. I have no idea what it is called, or what is in it, but it came from Pun Pun and I love it.

11. That smell which emanates from a really good fish and chip shop when the door is opened. Part fish, part oil, part salt and vinegar, all addictive.

12. Hedgerows in spring bloom. This is a cheat, as it means I can include things like elderflower, hawthorn, wild roses, damp ditches after a night rain, warming leaves of stray raspberry canes and sharp tangles of blackberries, honeysuckle, linden, and so many others.

13. Oakwood burning on a campfire, beechwood burning in a stove. Ash on and in both. Birchwood forever.

14. Great draughts of humid, nighttime, August air, circa 1987, coming in from the once vast swamp of the Humberhead Levels, as the pea viners light up the fields and cast the scent far and wide.

15. The leather sheath on my favourite knife (an Iisakki Järvenpää puukko), worn and full of my own oils and hints of all the times it has been out in the woods, coast, mountains, and moors, perhaps a memory of blood from slips and carelessness when I was younger. (See also: the leather belt I have worn for years, and old, well-maintained vegetable-tanned leather in general.)

16. Whatever plastic Lego is made of, when accumulated in a box, played with for years, perhaps chewed a little, full of promise and hope.

17. Turpentine, including the turpentine scent of fatwood when harvested. Breaking a pine branch or chopping at the base of a dead pine and smelling this is like smelling the fire it will kindle in a different form.

18. Wild chives, brushed past on a forest trail. And also the cool mountain wind bringing down the overpowering scent of wild bear garlic every spring, rushing through the village and reminding me it’s time to make pesto.

19. Similarly, wild strawberry. Their scent is a vast part of the taste and, oh my, it is heavenly. (I also love gathering their leaves for tisane.) I could wax lyrical about sun-warmed strawberries, or a perfect passion fruit, or those purple fleshed dragon fruit, or several other types of fruit, how the scent of those freshly picked is utterly different from the pallid and dry examples you find in shops, how we should all try and taste these things properly, at least once in our lives, and how such a massive part of that tasting comes through the nose.

20. Sphagnum moss, when plucked for cleaning purposes, whether for my billy can (with wood ash and sand) or my derriere (without wood ash or sand).

21. Balloons, when stretched out and then as I blow into them and inhale again. A scent that goes hand-in-hand with an excited child.

22. My fedora, dating to 1930s Germany, with the later addition of an added, internal soft leather headband after I cut off all my hair back in 2002ish, to compensate for its lack and make it fit again. It is rich in memory of felt, wearing and weather, and carries a dignified weight which befits being nearly 100 years old and as good as it ever was (£10 from Oxfam, Broomhill, Sheffield, 2001). I wear it a lot in winter here, mostly at my computer on dark days, so as to stop the glare of the lights above annoying me too much and to keep my head warm. I always wonder at its journey. And yes, of course Indy was an inspiration, I was reading Archaeology and Prehistory at the time, after all.

23. Turning and using compost when time has done its magic. A richness and reward, a promise of life to come.

24. Opening a new, quality board-game box, pushing out cardboard counters and pieces, handling wooden tokens and thinking of how many times they’ll be moved around, and all the little stories they’ll build, stories which will rarely be remembered. The scent of this is intrinsically tied in with the future.

25. Likewise, certain acrylic paints—also tied to a memory of the future, reminding me of when I used to paint Games Workshop models, and wonder what the future would bring for them, the battles and campaigns to be fought (ultimately, it brought me selling almost all of them, years later, now ‘vintage’, the money funding months of adventure out in the woods. A fair trade.). Acrylic paint smell will always transport me back to my teenage years in the 1990s.

26. The smell of the art hut used by Stromness Primary school, but actually a part of the old Stromness Academy, mid 1980s, all warm wooden floors and walls, pencil shavings, paints, paint-water (which I once drank for a dare and did not die), inks, papers, canvas, and rubbers perhaps made of real vulcanised rubber, those tiny used tendrils of once-tree-blood now strewn in the cracks of the hut, lost, trying to transfuse themselves back into a similar body. This scent underpins all art I create. (I searched online for an image of the art hut, but drew a blank. Any Orcadian readers who might have an image, or know where to find one, do please let me know!)

27. Brinkie’s Brae, above Stromness, Maytime, when the heather and gorse and peat are warmed by the rapidly lengthening days and the sea breeze is fresh and glorious. Even back then in my childhood, the knowledge that the sleeping uranium deposits beneath the West Mainland were still there, still a threat if extracted, a part of the whole, adding a frisson (fission?) of danger to a delicious scent. (Orkney has a particular series of scents, something you will no doubt know if you’ve ever lived there, or visited. Go up one hill and it smells a certain way, that beach over there different to that other one. Thousands of scents, each a placemarker, a point in space and time found only through the nose.)

28. Smoke machine smoke. Especially when overused and in a small, badly ventilated club, mid to late 90s. Perhaps early 2000s. The scent overpowering that of sweating dancers, of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and dubious deodorant.

29. The sweetness of Golden Virginia, the slightly more raw and rugged Old Holborn, most pipe tobacco, but never anything pre-rolled, unless it is a very good cigar, or that curious box of perhaps Turkish cigarettes I was once gifted decades ago. It’s been a long item since I smoked, and I find I miss the ritual of rolling a cigarette or packing a pipe more than the act of actually smoking it.

30. The A4961 road, on certain mornings between 1993 and 1995, where it passes through the Highland Park distillery. Similarly, when there was a south-east wind blowing from the Old Pulteney distillery in Wick.

31. My Matterhorn leather combat boots. Worn for archaeological survey/fieldwalking work in the Sierra of central Spain, 2003, in August. During the day, it was fiercely heatwave hot, and everything was scented by the wild mountain thyme. Those boots still retain a hint of this scent today, over twenty years later.

32. The fynbos, scent blown to the nostrils by the Cape Doctor. As I stepped out of the aircon bubble of Cape Town airport, that smell was something utterly alien to me, my first new floristic kingdom outside the one I had grown entwined within. It smelled of adventure, of self-discovery, of a different path.

33. A certain batch of beef jerky for a Scottish bushcraft adventure I made back in 2008. I’ve never quite got it right since, but it was utterly delicious and the scent was a big part of that. Maybe a bit Worcestershire sauce, a touch of dark soy, some chilli flakes, salt, and good lean beef, but very much its own thing, blended.

34. The warm, sleepy smell of Ailsa when I wake her first thing in the morning. An olfactory hug, every time, reminding me of the journey to that point. Every time.

35. Salt and Vinegar sticks, circa 1990. Close second: pickled onion flavour Monster Munch, similar temporal zone. Likewise, an old fashioned sweet shop. Tendrils of Black Jacks mixed with Rhubarb and Custard, hints of gobstoppers and sickly-sweet flumps, something chocolate, something lime, something which makes the mouth water and the nose crave more, as though the air is so laden with sugared treats that we get a different hit with each inhalation. Also, Heinz tomato soup with my Mum’s homemade bread from when she had the first bread machine, a rare treat.

36. The wildness of my then lover, who we’ll call Daisy, her scent a marvel I cannot even begin to describe; a long, long time ago, when I was learning much about the world. She captured something I felt a part of, something I felt apart from, something I wanted to explore, deeply, and a part of me I was afraid of, all perfectly distilled into how she smelled. For teenage me it/she was a revelation.

37. Argan oil, sun warmed on skin. Sometimes also coconut oil, but that always makes me long for the gorse bloom. Occasionally also shea butter, depending on who has it on them. And certainly the oils I made for Aurélie, which she applies before bed, infused with calendula, a touch of lavender, plantain, yarrow, St. John’s Wort, all infused in olive oil and blended just-so. (Also, I love the go-to balm I make, too, very similar ingredients, with added beeswax and sometimes usnea, itself a scent I adore.)

38. A particular bouquet of wildflowers I went out along the field edges to carefully select, before heading to Stenness Primary school one spring morning, destined for the desk of the girl I really fancied at the time, a secret smuggled declaration. I can still smell it now, forty years later. Weird, huh?

39. My current tisane of choice: a few leaves of birch, some mugwort, a pinch of tulsi, a few straggles of yarrow, lemon balm, and rosemary. It was even better when I had Jiaogulan, but I’ve run out now. Sad face. It has one smell once mixed and another once the water has added, and I view both as sides of a coin. Ritual, and ritualistic practices, often come with deep, intrinsic scents embedded within them. (Although I often take it far too much for granted, cuppa-addict that I am, the scent of a strong black tea is another good example. Coffee, too, obvs.; less obviously, Thai tea, no extra sugar.)

40. How Aurélie would smell when she came home after a day divemaster training. Salty and warm, carrying hints of another world into my nostrils, a world I’m highly unlikely to ever explore myself.

41. How I smell after I am disciplined enough to use the little gym I built in the workshop downstairs. A bit dusty, hands somewhat metallic, with a hint of rubber and boxing glove, overlain with fresh sweat and, sometimes, chocolate protein powder. It is the scent of a form of progress and achievement. (See also: the smell of printing out a chapter to edit by hand; refilling a fountain pen; cracking open a new journal, etcetera.)

42. Whatever mascara and eyeliner I used back in day, when heading out-out. I cannot for the life of me recall the brand of either, but that combo was powerful magic, a mask and lure both.

43. My own Hoisan sauce. It is just yummy, perfectly Unami-scented, perfect sillage. I should really write down the recipe at some point, it might not be (isn’t) truly authentic, but it is delicious and smells awesome.

44. Bonfire night—again, decades ago—in this case, especially Guy Fawkes night (there’s a strong argument for Samhain and Beltane, too, but those are more adult memories and scents for me). Woodsmoke, gunpowder and sparklers, toffee apples, bonfire toffee, and frying onions.

45. Old, old places of worship and gathering. Whether the small and mouldering CofE churches I remember from Lincolnshire, the grand European cathedrals, Asian temples, stone circles at sunrise, or a small almost-forgotten spring in the forest—these places have a scent which carries power and depth-of-human-(pre)history straight through the nose and into the soul.

46. The sea. Especially the Atlantic breaking onto Europe, crumbling her shores and pulling in mysteries from the deep places. Especially in Scotland. The sea is something I have tried to share my thoughts about before, a lot, and I know I will never even come close. This is a good thing.

The Crow's Nest

The Sea, as Artist

To stand—salt-stiff and spray-drenched, high on a cliff watching the sea grow and grow until she takes up the whole bay, a constant rolling thunder, breaking and cracking as she arrives, every seventh wave the largest, every seventh seventh larger still—is to feel alive…

Read more

2 years ago · 44 likes · 31 comments · Alexander M Crow

47. The first tendril of smoke when you light a fire with sticks. As in, rubbing them together. There is no scent more directly correlated to hope than this and, I think, probably never has been and never will be.

48. Argos bakery in Stromness, Orkney. Especially the precise scent when you ask for one of their legendary custard doughnuts and they reach in to get it. I’ve now been sans gluten for around 15 years, thanks to a high level of intolerance, and it saddens me to think I’ll never get to eat one of those again. Still, I have the memory, and the scent.

49. An old suitcase of treasures, found in a barn or attic, slightly mouldering, scented faintly with mothballs and strongly with time. There is a particular scent to opening a thing or space which has been shut for a long time, as though you are inhaling the past which, in many ways, I guess you are. Once upon a time, my sisters and I found treasure in one of the outbuildings near our house. It was not our treasure, but then we were pirates rather than the Crown, the buildings were not ours, but we played there regardless. There were mice and rats and birds, and who knew what else. One day, we moved a straw and bird dropping covered tarp to find a container—I remember not what it was, precisely, maybe a decayed cardboard box, or an old suitcase [my memory makes it a suitcase, but my memory is no longer the best judge of these matters], or perhaps a wooden crate), with the content spilling out into the straw and poop. There was something bright there in the gloom and, as we looked more closely, we realised it was a stamp. A stamp from somewhere far away and long ago, a moment in two times, linked by journeys—from whoever wrote and sent the letter, to whoever received it, to whoever saved the stamp to us. The smell of that moment, of discovering this little rectangle of another place and time, that scent has stuck with me. Needless to say, we excavated a little further and found more stamps, then a whole album, each page rich with that vannillinesque scent of slowly decaying paper. A wealth of beautiful images made more precious by their precarious position. Old barns sometimes smell like this. As do rooms which have not been aired for a long time, or cellars locked away and forgotten. It is not always a comfortable scent, but it is a true scent of adventure, of mystery, of childhood, and it remains a favourite of mine. And yes, despite the protestations of our parents, we kept those stamps—none of us could stand to see or smell them decay any more.

What About You?

What about you? Do you have a favourite scent, or a whole list of them? Does something inhaled remind you of a moment—as when you walk through a crowd and someone passes you, wearing a perfume you associate with someone else, long ago, forgotten, but for that reminder?

Finally

I have left out a veritable catalogue of favourite scents here. I knew finding 49 would not be a problem, but I did not quite anticipate how many others would be left out, unsniffed and unshared. Maybe, if I make it, and the internet is still a thing, I’ll share a further list at some other big birthday year in the future, with new, old scents.

Many thanks for reading, I really appreciate that you do. It has been a awhile since I shared something other than my Witness Notes series, but I have plans I’ll discuss in a few weeks, plans which should see more shared here, and elsewhere, along with updates to other work, too. It feels like it is time to do so.

As I discussed, here, the only work I’ll be paywalling in future will be my fiction, once a piece has initially been shared for free. However, there is still an option to subscribe, simply as a way to support my writing and, for those of you who do so, I cannot tell you how grateful I am. I don’t like gatekeeping if I can help it, so sharing things for free and hoping that people still see the value in it seems a good balance to me.

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If a subscription is not possible, but you wish to support my work, then I have a KoFi link here, where you can pay for a cup of tea (or more, if you wish and can afford to).

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you cannot afford a monetary amount, please remember that sharing my work, here and elsewhere, or forwarding an email, liking a piece or, especially, commenting, is also a fantastic way to show support. I try to get to all the comments, but sometimes it takes a wee while to do so. That does not mean I don’t appreciate them, I really do, thank you.

Finally, thanks again for reading, I hope this list has made you think about how scent and smell is so very important to the majority of us, and how we often ignore it anyway.

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Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

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Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995.

I am partway up the cliff when I realise my mistake. Not climbing in welly boots, nor climbing without ropes—those are normal—but picking a route which takes me too close to a fulmar nest. Usually, I check this but, on this particular day I did not notice the bird, tucked into a ledge, away from view.

I see the bird, the bird sees me and, as is the custom of fulmar, it leans forward to try and vomit a foul-scented mess on me. I lean back.

Which is, of course, a mistake. Sticky, oily vomit or not—leaning back from a cliff face is unwise.

The rock I was holding starts to come away, comically slow. It, like much of this cliff, was loose—held together on one plane, fractured on another. Like so many of us. Something pulls the wrong way, you come apart.

I fall.

It is not that far to the rocks below, but it is far enough to make me understand the gravity of the situation as I am weightless, attracted by gravity and thoroughly seen off by a cousin of the albatross family. Damn tube-noses.

When I was young, Stenness Primary School had two classrooms—the Big End and the Peedie End. I was in the former, and my teacher at that time was the headmaster, writer, Orcadian scholar and collector of stories, Gregor Lamb.

I remember a story he used to tell, one which seems fitting to slip into this piece, here. It took place not far from where I was falling, on the now-uninhabited island of Copinsay. A visitor to the island, perhaps someone connected to the lighthouse, or maybe someone visiting during the war years, when the population of Orkney became swollen like the corpse of a beached whale—I forget which—asked to go along with one of the families who still lived there, as they went to collect eggs.

Now, collecting eggs in our modern parlance might sound quaint for many. It is something not too many city-based folk have done, after all and, in their mind, probably involves ducking into a chicken coop and plucking out the eggs neatly arranged there. As someone who has actually collected eggs, I can affirm that, yes, this is often the case but, quite often, it is considerably more work than that.

The eggs have been hidden. The chickens do not want you to take them. You slip and end up sitting in chicken poop. You bang your head trying to escape the angry hen.

However, in the case in point in this tale, the eggs were considerably more free range than this.

Copinsay is gently sloping, rising up from the direction of Mainland Orkney and Deerness—where I lived at that time—to the other side of the island, stark and naked to the whims of the North Sea, sheer cliffs, not unlike the one I was climbing.

The tourist, the visitor, whoever they were, watched, as the man tied a rope around the waist of one of his children, then lowered them down, to gather seabird eggs. They would scramble this way and that, filling a basket with the eggs and avoiding the angry parents as best they could. It was a dangerous, messy business, but essential for survival, the eggs feeding the family for a long time, able to be traded for other items, all of which needed to be rowed across from the Mainland.

Watching this, mildly horrified at the risks taken with the children, the man asked the father, ‘What happens if the rope breaks?’

To which he received the reply, ‘Well, don’t worry, I’ve plenty more rope.’

Of course, this reply would have been in Orcadian dialect, a rich and beautiful thing, a remnant of a past thankfully being guarded for our future.

As I fell, I wonder if that story popped into my head. Perhaps. It seems more likely I used that time to try and direct my downwards descent, successfully, as it turned out, landing on the only patch of grass and sea pink amongst a mass of jagged rock.

I still badly twisted my knee, but was able to mostly laugh it off. The walk home was not fun, however, and I seem to recall that was the last time I ever climbed in wellington boots.

I have also been wary of fulmar ever since and, ever since, my right knee hurts in wet weather or, increasingly—if I’m honest—dry weather, too.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. July, 2021.

Moving through a natural woodland is different from passing through any other environment. You cannot rush, you cannot allow yourself to miss the little details. The more time you spend amongst the trees, the more you realise this and the quicker your pace alters: slow, slower, pause, repeat. Essentially, you return to a more natural state, a rhythm as old as our species itself.

You listen, you look, these senses you already know well pulling in huge amounts of data. For most people, the vast majority of their information comes from sight and sound, but spend time in the woods and you learn to touch things—that tree bark, that rock or leaf, for example, you learn to inhale in a different way, deliberately sampling the air and all the varied perfumes it brings. You can even learn to taste that same air, or pick a leaf or fruit and chew.

Then there are the senses we don’t always realise exist, let alone consciously utilise. Some of these can be a little unnerving when you first start to actively use and acknowledge them—some people call them a sixth sense which, quite frankly, is silly. We have far more than five senses, after all. Learning to listen to that little voice in your head, the one which tells you something is watching you, or that there’s something ahead on the trail, these things take time, but it is time which is well spent indeed.

Of course, this isn’t supernatural at all, but simply your brain processing different information and picking up on tiny details you have consciously missed. Perhaps a change in the air brought a tendril of scent? We often fail to use our noses as we can—try it, now, sitting reading this, open your nostrils wide and inhale slowly and deliberately, you may be surprised what you can sample. Similarly, learning to snuffle like a dog at a scent trail is possible too, involving faster inhalation and sampling, your sense of smell actually being worked properly. Both these things can seem like strange magic, but also seek to remind us how civilisation can dull our own bodily functions.

The woodland is a complex machine of many parts. It exists on different scales and even across time. I have walked across Scottish hillsides, devoid of any tree cover, but have known from the wide flourishes of native bluebells and anemones that I was walking through the ghost of a wood. If you look closely at the ground around you, you can often see small depressions, pockmarks from where trees were once blown over, tearing the ground and leaving their mark, long after they have rotted into the soil, eaten by large mouths and small.

There exists a special light in woods, it filters through seasons and sun and rain, drifting through lifetimes, whether that of the tiny flowers carpeting the forest floor, your own, or that of the grandest oak.

Wooded mountain valleys can maintain microclimates of their own, entirely different to that a stone’s throw away. Each area attracting a differing clientele, a question of scale within scales, Matryoshka-style.

One side of a wooded valley is entirely different to the other. Different species of trees allow different understoreys, different flora and fauna, all within a tiny area. You can even teach yourself to know what species of trees are present by listening to the wind—different leaves make different sounds, watch, listen, learn: one rustle for oak and another for ash.

To learn about the wood is to learn about life itself. It can teach us as much about ourselves as it does about this tree or that, or who that caterpillar becomes, what chewed those holes, why is this leaf patterned like that, which friend left those tracks?

To learn about the wood is to be reminded of what matters, to be rejuvenated, to be healed of those myriad invisible wounds we receive within the urban environment.

This process can be difficult for some people, taking a step back, revisiting atrophied senses, sometimes feeling enclosed and claustrophobic, primal and imagined fears rearing their head—but the results are worth it. Once, a friend of mine was concerned about my leaving my job to spend time in the woods on my own, worried about the dangerous lone men in the woods, with their knives and axes. I gently pointed out these men are nearly always fictional, that they simply don’t exist and I would be fine out there. With my knives and axe. Alone. It’s not hard to see how these stories and fears appear—if hikers or kayakers had met me at my wildest, with a long beard, woodsmoke-scented, wearing my axe on my belt, a knife at the other side and another around my neck, then I wonder what they would have thought. In the UK, certainly, these things are no longer common, nor always legal.

(As a counterpoint of sorts to the above, I remember one long, rambling conversation with my sadly now dead dissertation tutor, the larger-than-life Professor [and Count, I believe] Marek Zvelebil. We were talking about woodlands, and [human] life in woods, and he explained about Finnish settlers to the mid-west US, and how they would often plant trees all around their homestead, close, blocking extensive views, the wide-open prairie deeply unsettling for them, having come from a place where the woods were deep and all-pervasive.)

To me, to walk in a woodland, especially one less-managed, less tamed, is to hear the voices of our ancestors, to understand how we are but a blink in time, connected to something vast and essentially, reassuringly, incompressible. They are our ancestral home and to sit beneath the spreading branches of ancient friends is to step back in time, become something we are perhaps meant to be.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. June, 2021.

Everything is wet, everything is fresh and green, new and spring-like until, almost overnight, summer arrives. And she arrives with the subtlety of someone snatching you off the street, fully-clothed, and throwing you into a sauna. The mountain greening is complete, the summer bleaching coming.

The valley in which Grenoble and Echirolles sit holds the heat and maintains the humidity. The pollution builds up here in summer, nowhere near as much as it did in Chiang Mai, but it is noticeable. Mountains are hidden, disappearing behind greying air, the blue leaching from the sky day by day, only to suddenly reappear, cleaned and fresh after a thunderstorm, as though someone has restored the painting. The air is close and full of energy.

It is no wonder people leave the city for the coast or the mountains in summer. We shall be doing both.

Outside the window the blackcap has started to sing once more, joined by the never-ceasing serin, the great tit, blackbird, sparrow, and collared dove. Sometimes, there are others, such as the black kite I witnessed almost crashing to the ground, mobbed by crows, twirling and dropping to escape. We have been visited by a kestrel, a sparrowhawk, a buzzard and my current favourite—the crested tit, punklike, carrying considerable attitude in a tiny frame.

The scent of roses and peonies rises to my floor, my side of the house cooler than the other in the mornings, the air still relatively fresh. I cannot wait for the scent of the mountainside in the morning, or the taste of salt on my lips once more, the wind from the Mediterranean almost ever-present, reminding me of home, whatever that means.

Each day, each month, season, and year creates a new tale of its own. There are always similarities with the previous chapters, but as time moves on, so does the story. Those robins nest in a different place, meaning their previous location is now available for the blackbird. That cherry tree is damaged by a late cold snap, encouraged to sleep longer, opening tentative leaves in the middle of June, long after the other two. This means the birds on the feeder are far easier to view. Covid means the shrubs and plants have been allowed to grow longer, wilder, more bushy along the pathways. This gives the birds and other animals more food, more shelter, more room to nest and nurture.

Every day, a different story. Every year, different.

Now, look at your own location and time, and consider the variables. A vast and incomprehensible web begins to appear, with one strand leading to another, one branch taking it in an entirely different direction. Too often, we forget this. Stories of scale are difficult to comprehend, how one action on another side of the world has a direct effect in your own back garden.

We can only control tiny portions of this story, so much is out of our hands—yet it is this very act of accepting we are unable to write the whole which means the tale itself can flourish.

Fill the bird feeders. Leave out water on hot days, or everyday. Let a patch of your garden grow wild. Pick up that litter. Choose plastic-free alternatives. There are other actions we can take, each certainly worthwhile but, perhaps most of all, we need to share the differences in our stories with one another—and rejoice in them. We need to show that, by acting individually, we can absolutely change things but, by working together, we can set the world itself on a different, better path.

That’s why we tell the tales, for communication is key; communication is telling stories, of course it is, but it is also learning when to be quiet and simply listen. Nature has much to share.

Everybody has a starring role in their life. Everybody is the lead character, supported by a wide and varied cast, some family, some friends, the occasional rival or enemy. We all have an opportunity to choose our direction, if we wish to, although it is disingenuous to not mention this is considerably easier for certain groups than others.

Our stories are all important. Every moment of every life, how they interact and weave together, how one person can turn the direction of their life and those around them in but a single heartbeat.

Too often, it is the voices of despair and misery which are loudest. This is simply human nature; we as a species love a good disaster or opportunity to be glad it is not us suffering. However, as the distances between our cultures and nations shrink, as our ability to travel anywhere on earth within a span of time measurable in hours grows, then it is the natural boundaries which begin to be tested.

For the first time in our collective history, we can hear the stories of others if we want to and, crucially and critically, if we do not. This means we can no longer ignore those tales, those lives, as we once could. True, there are those who do not care, those who go out of their way to denounce difference and reject cooperation, and they can shout and rail and scream as much as they like, but it no longer really matters.

Change is coming, big change. There is no escaping that, the balance is shifting. Our stories swirl together more and more, threads tangling and pulling in new directions—and do not believe it will definitely end in a dystopian hellscape, there is a chance a protopia beckons. Why not? We, as a species, can dream big.

We all need to pay attention, we all need to realise we can make a difference, because all of our stories matter. Let’s keep talking to each other—and let’s keep listening.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Leicester, England. Autumn, 1998.

The following paragraphs were a big part of the genesis for my Witness Notes series—the idea of sharing vignettes from my life, whether things originally shared via my earlier letters, years ago, or from former blog posts, my journals, notebooks, or memories.

This one, I shared on Substack Notes on Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve), 2025, and it planted the idea of sharing more. I have not shared it as a Witness Note as yet, as I thought it perhaps too long, but I think it is now time to do so.

A long time ago, a generation or more (depending on whose definition of generation you take, of course), I found myself waiting for a train from Leicester to Derby. I was with my housemate, and we were, for all intents and purposes, cosplaying Down And Out In The Midlands (of England). During that time, Orwell would have recognised our situation and circumstances and nodded, before returning to scrubbing his dishes or tramping along ancient routes circling and spiralling out from London Town.

On this day, we decided to risk the money for the train tickets and spend it in a bar near the station, instead. At that time, we often had to choose between eating, or drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes, we’d espouse both in favour of cheap alcohol.

The bar had a pool table and, because it was mid-morning and no one else was there, the barman let us play for free. We’d bought pints of local bitter and a bag of crisps each for breakfast, and he seemed a benevolent sort, chatting amiably for a time, until he went to check the lines on a couple of barrels. We did not sit down, those chairs and benches looked like they were heavily impregnated with the ash and tar of centuries. The smell, I’m sure some of you remember—I do not miss that.

We were busy talking about whether we should somehow move to Berlin, rather than Derby, how we needed more experience of different places to be able to write deeply, with a richness which comes from travel and excitement when the door opened and a man walked in.

I’m sure you’ve probably met people like him. One look, and you know he is dangerous. Not the bluster and swagger of the gym-swollen and terminally lacking in sense, but the danger which comes from actually being dangerous. He glanced around the room quickly, noting there was no barman, looking us up and down, and that there was no one else there.

We exchanged quick glances between ourselves, then said good morning and got back to the game at hand. Best to be polite.

This man was not large, but he was wiry and carried himself with the surety of confidence and experience.

‘Are you here for the match?’ he asked, as we tried our best to shrink and somehow disappear, looking at our still mostly full pints and knowing we could not leave immediately without risking offence.

‘No,’ we replied quickly, in unison, ‘Waiting for a train back to Derby.’ We were not really interested in football and, proclaiming any foolish allegiance to a team in a bar near a railway station is not wise.

We silently prayed he would simply let us be, especially as, at that moment, he took off his battered leather jacket and turned to the bar, showing the hilt of a knife in the back pocket of worn jeans. We thought we might have been saved by the return of the barman, who clearly knew and respected this man, immediately pouring him a pint and a double of whisky as a chaser. No money seemed to change hands.

The man turned back to us and placed coins on the pool table. We couldn’t leave now, he couldn’t play himself, after all.

I think we both thought the same thing—maybe throw that match between us, lose, so as to not have to play the stranger. And I think we both came to the same conclusion—better to play as well as we could, or we’d risk losing respect and setting us on a bad footing for what came next. He’d watched us both play already, after all and, in those days, we were both rather good players, hours spent on the tables at university the preceding years, days spent in bars. I’ve not played pool in a long, long time, now.

Strangely, I can’t remember which of us won, but I do recall much of the conversation.

At one point, he asked what we did, looking at us closely as he lit up another hand-rolled cigarette from the dying butt of the last, obviously expecting something more than ‘we work for a job agency, taking whatever sporadic, horrendous scraps and shit they throw our way.’

We answered honestly.

‘We are writers.’

He didn’t bat an eyelid, just inhaled and exhaled then, in a cloud of Old Holborn smoke, took his shot.

At another point, I’m not sure when, he took out his knife and placed it on the table, to be able to better bend over and stretch to reach the cue ball. His hands were scarred and rough, tattooed and lived-in. The barman watched us carefully, ignoring the knife, as the man continued the conversation.

‘Tough game, writing.’

We exchanged glances again, familiar with the hardest job in the world sketch in The Fast Show, featuring Paul Whitehouse’s character, Archie The Pub Bore.

What followed was surprising, given how he looked and acted. Unlike Archie, he did not tell us he was a writer himself, but began to share advice on what he thought we should do, how we should approach writing and the world at large. It was, wondrously, sensible and carefully thought out. He talked about observation, about not missing a thing, about note taking and diaries and journals, and he spoke of using these things in our fiction—my novels and my friend’s scripts.

He ended by talking about how we should ensure we have a strong nucleus of people we trust around us, if we are to stand a chance of making a living with words, people who understand what it means to be a writer. He finished with telling us that, if we were serious, we needed to get an agent, but to make sure we did our research first, find someone younger, who was still ambitious enough to ensure they took chances and also represented us with heart, mind, and soul.

Eventually, it came time to leave that pub and that man, after he bought us another drink, not listening to our protestations about not being able to afford to reciprocate, that he had appreciated the company and conversation but, looking back, I wonder how much of that conversation actually included us talking. He did most of it and, to this day, I wonder who he was, what was his story? How did he know so much about what it meant to be a writer, both practically and also much, much deeper than that? I still remember the feel of his hand in mine as he shook it as we left, how strong and how sure it was. He genuinely seemed to have enjoyed our company.

I’m not going to end this with a lesson, I’m seeing too many stories churned out by AI here which follow that pattern. The lesson—or lessons, plural—is/are already there, above. What I will say is that, this coming year, I really think it is time I follow that last piece of his advice, and find that agent. Whenever I’ve thought about an agent over the last few decades, I’ve always thought of that bar and those pool games—and it feels good to write down this snippet of memory and finally share it.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it, thank you.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. May, 2021.

Of all the magics I have witnessed, the time of the mountain greening is perhaps that which quickens my heart the most.

The bursting of spring is deliciously fresh, the bee drone of the long hot summer days sensuality itself, the roaring of the stags as the woodlands turn red and gold and yellow and russet thrills without exception, and the deep quiet of the snow-thick winter places the perfect hideaway for serious meditation.

Yet, for each of the four readily-acknowledged seasons, there are many others shoehorned within their boundaries—and, increasingly, those boundaries and dates are themselves stretched and altered.

Winter is not just deep winter, it is first-frost and first-snow, it is the shortest day, and the coldest time, it is when the wolves howl and the skies dance with the magic of the aurora, the sparkle of the stars and galaxies stretching out and out and out, far beyond our time and space. It is full of many things, each a season unto itself, each a moment which is reached, a step on a path winding through our lives.

The mountain greening is a small portion of spring. I have been fortunate to be near mountains in spring on several occasions. Perhaps not as much as I would like, but there are other springs in other places, and I do not have that many years to experience every shift of the earth. Other springs, whether by the coast of Scotland and the changing of the birds and budding of the clifftop and dune flowers, or whether the end of the dry season and the coming of the rains in the tropics, the relief of clear air palpable—they are all wonders of their own.

Watching that creeping line of fresh, bright green moving up a wooded mountainside, however, is something ancient, something primeval—buried within me so very deeply I cannot help but pause and stare, no matter how many times I look. There are days where the sun coaxes the trees to leaf almost before my eyes, another strata unfurling, pushing higher and higher, only to pause with the night, or a colder or overcast day, resting on this plateau, catching a breath in that corrie or below that ridge, before pushing over and beyond and ever up.

Here, in Isère, the mountain greening is well underway, but not yet over. Every morning, as I look out the window at the view of the Vercors Massif to the west, I try and gauge whether the line of trees in leaf is higher than yesterday, whether the yellow tree flowers and catkins on the lower slopes have conquered another elevation, or have decided to camp and recover for a spell. As in Scotland, there are days in which the unfurling is almost visible to the naked eye, and others where nothing moves at all. (The two photos of the same scene below were taken a week apart, on the south shore of Loch Nevis—the Lake of Heaven—in the west of Scotland.)

For me, this is true magic. It is not straightforward, it is not a yes/no response, does not follow a strict timetable or plan. Instead, it is chaos, diverse factors acting upon each tree, each branch and each leaf bud. The whole is a metaphor for the year, for life itself—we cannot fit everything into neat bundles of pre-ordained time: life and death happen, whether we want them to or not.

The mountain greening also reminds me of something I studied back in the mists of time—the concept of refugia, of places in mountain valleys where life continues, no matter how strong the wind, how high the ice beyond. This is where certain tree species hid and waited, biding their time and outlasting the ice age, spreading forth once more across continents, a slow, inexorable march.

Refugia are hope encapsulated. Each refuge an ark of genetic material, each carrying promise of life anew. As I look at the world we live in, how we are failing—or have failed?—to contain great change ahead, I remember these places, every spring a flush of green joy, every leaf a reminder that we have been mislabelling climate change for too long. The idea of global systems failing, of huge swathes of the earth becoming uninhabitable or too dangerous to live in is, of course, too esoteric, too obtuse—it does not engage the individual, or the tribe at large.

Every civilisation before ours has been sure they would continue on and on. Every civilisation has looked at those before their own and deemed them lesser developed, less hardy, surmising their own had fewer chances of failing. Every civilisation has been wrong. Ours is no different.

The real peril of climate change is not to the earth itself—the planet operates at different timescales remember, vast, vast timescales very difficult for the untrained to comprehend—no, the real peril is to humankind.

If we relabel the battle to save the planet as the battle to save our species I suspect more might be done but, honestly, throughout all this, I simply prefer to remember the mountain greening, the refugia—those species which will survive beyond ours. It is a curious sense of hope, one entangled in a web of death and extinction and violent change—but it is hope nevertheless, and that is something joyful.

Well, that turned out a little longer than intended. I had planned on merely sharing the joy of watching the mountain turn green, but my brain decided you should instead hear my wider thought-process. Sometimes this is the way, similarly with my fiction—what I think will be a quick scene turns into something more, something more dense, more chewy...

[EDITOR’S NOTE, May 2026: This particular month marked the point when my briefer vignettes, those I’ve been sharing as my Witness Notes, began to take on a different appearance, longer, more entwined with the world and the events shaping all around us. I toyed with the idea of editing this down, just to include the place- and time-specific, but that felt reductive and a little sad. There was—and is—a reason why I talk about active hope and the great upheaval our species is creating and receiving both. As such, I have left the piece as it was, taking other parts of the same letter (separated by the photos) which followed on with the same theme. There will be other Witness Notes, shorter scenes and observations, but I think I need to share these as they were crafted, with only minor alterations, in order to do the words justice. I hope that they are still of interest.]

It is May, my favourite month of the year, not because it contains my birthday, but because it is the month where new growth and new green consistently gathers pace and pushes the year forward into a burst of life. At least here in the northern hemisphere, of course—I do not forget there are many millions of people for whom May means something different.

Although there are obviously other months with 31 days within them before May in the calendar, this is the first month I see as truly long. I suspect this is because the daylight continues to lengthen (again, up here in the north), and the sun works its magic upon me after the winter and early spring.

The world we live in is at a point of great change. All too often, people assume things will continue along the same path they have in recent history, but recent history is just that, a snapshot in time. Move the scale a little and it is hard not to notice how we as a species are still relatively new. All of civilisation itself has occurred within a tiny timeframe, the portion since the industrial revolution even more microscopic. Yet, it is this portion which is altering our planet at a ridiculously fast rate.

It is easy to place our heads in the sand and ignore the damage, ignore the issues. It is easy to overlook the changes, to simply focus on the day-to-day, the simple acts of making a living, eating, sleeping, rinse and repeat. And this is how you can be controlled, how you can lose a sense of your own individual power.

Some people think about the changes in the world and then give in to despair, they do not see how they can make a difference. It is all too easy to lose hope.

However, remember the refugia? Those small mountain valleys where trees rested, biding their time, to once more spread out across a continent?

I would suggest we all take some time to acknowledge the good things in our lives: good food, the connection we feel to a powerful story, those lateral shifts in our brains when we play a game and, above all, perhaps, that sense of belonging we can achieve through the study of the nature around us.

Take these things and consider yourself a mountain valley, a refuge of one—and reach out, spread your joy at a movie, your delight at identifying a species of fungi for the very first time, or the fact you can vote peacefully and safely in your country. Share it. Show others who may either have their heads buried in the proverbial sand, or may have given in to despair, to ‘I’m one person, what can I do?’; show them, and offer them something powerful.

We are all refugia, we all carry the potential of hope, the potential of joy and rebirth and love. Times are perilous, times are changing—but I wholeheartedly believe we can all make a positive difference, nevertheless.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change (I’m getting there!).

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. April, 2021.

As the sun warms, the water flows. Everywhere on the mountainside, the sound of running streams, whether tumbling and brim-full of snowmelt, or thin rivulets, snaking to join their companions. Rhythm, rhyme, melody and music. Other than this, the sounds are mostly birdsong, each feathered bundle welcoming the spring with frantic activity. Nests are being built, relationships founded or reinforced, food collected and rivals discouraged. Birds and the water, wind in the trees, creaking of branches and the humming of bees.

Bright flashes of fungi litter the forest floor, the warming days and wet conditions welcoming weird and beautiful shapes and sizes. Many I do not yet know, others old friends. Tracks in the ground, traces of those who came before, dropped deposits handy markers for identification: ermine and weasel and mole. The ground has been turned over by the snouts of the wild boar, the sanglier, capable of lifting rocks weighing half their hefty bodyweight, or more. Their disturbance is excellent for the soil, aerating and dispersing, encouraging seeds to sprout. Natures’ heavyweight gardeners are often accompanied by the robin, who has now also transferred his attention to the allotments and gardens of mankind.

These woodlands are worked, tall giants felled individually, rather than the vast denudation of the clear-cut system. Piles of logs slumber by the road and trails, gently drying and beginning to season, often covered in bright flashes of identifying numbers, or scrambles of children, playing.

Much of this area has altered in the last few generations. As small scale sheep and cattle rearing became economically unviable, their pastures and slopes were left fallow and in moved the birch, followed by others: Norway maple, linden, beech, oak, chestnut, poplar, mountain ash, larch, Norway spruce, silver fir, and various pines. Today these woodlands look older than they are, perhaps because the land still retains a memory of their cover from long before, perhaps because it feels right.

As the woods returned, so did the animals, the deer, the boar, even the wolves. Higher, the remaining flocks of sheep and goats are sometimes interspersed with dogs, bred to look like the sheep they guard, but sheep with big teeth, loud barks and snarls. There are shepherds here, moving the animals from slope to slope, above the forests, in the places where the snow sits deepest in winter, the hillside ringing with the stone-crack of the raven call, the melancholy of the eagle, and the frantic shriek of the marmot.

And, throughout it all, the importance of the water, plummeting and splashing, pooling and crashing. It carries snowmelt, carries tiny, suspended cloudy particles, the crushed rock of the glaciers, worn by centuries and gravity. It also carries those unfortunate enough to be caught in it, or those whose time came, only for their bones to fall into the streams and themselves tumbled smooth, heading down down down. Rivers and watercourses and beaches are the perfect places to find natural resources. Things are moved, things exposed, a natural store for creation and need. Flint nodules can be found beside iron, pyrites sitting near cracked slate. It is little stretch of the imagination to see these places as the supermarket of times prehistorical, banks explored, detritus collected, driftwood stacked to be used later, clay pulled out by hand, or antler tools.

Water is life, and always has been, it is a channel to our own history, a lane leading to our ancestors. Wars have been fought over water, vast populations moved, sending ripples throughout history. It is all too easy to look upon a wave of refugees, the terminology liquid in itself, and not see what has created the disturbance in our ocean of humanity. Perhaps drought and failed harvests in Syria, or the Sahara pushing south, places where the flow and tinkle is no longer seen and heard, the birds themselves moved on. One can only guess how many other places will fall similarly silent in the coming decades.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. March, 2021.

In the morning, the great looming bulk of the Vercors Massif is lit pink with the dawn, a line sliding down the cliff face to meet the trees below, the tenacious patches of snow a constant switching of pastels; an artist who can’t quite decide on the right shade. The snow is no longer pristine white—instead, the desert came to the mountains, strong winds from the south bringing Saharan sand to dust and coat all, concealing the view and make breathing harder for many. Ridge-lines appeared and disappeared, orange haze obscuring then lifting, revealing the serried rows and points of peaks.

We are all connected, parts of a whole, a puzzle beyond simple comprehension, full of chaos, full of new beginnings, often at the expense of something else’s end. The wind blows from Africa and the snow in the Alps turns brown.

Here, in Isère, winter is settling down for her long summer nap. She may yet toss and turn, throwing off a fresh blanket of snow with her movement, or crisping all with frost, but the sun is lulling her to sleep, simultaneously charming catkins, blossom, and early spring flowers towards the light. The ground is a riot of primrose in particular, with the blues, purples, and pinks of other fresh-faced early flowers scattered betwixt and between.

The birds are, in some cases, already nesting. Their songs strong and almost constant, here a great tit, there a serin, everywhere the blackbird, each defending their parcel of garden and urban oasis. I have my binoculars again, arrived from Portugal safe and in one piece, and I have an app or two to identify and suggest bird song. I did not know the call of the serin until last week—they hide in the trees, thrilling, trilling, then flitting across the field of view swiftly; blink and you will miss them.

Yesterday, the cherry trees began to tentatively unfurl, unsure whether winter is definitely sleeping or not. With luck, she is—some years, I am told, they get it wrong, and all the fruit is frost-murdered, long before it gets a chance to properly form. In the recent winds, clouds of pollen were shaken loose from the Italian cypress, so thick and dense that I initially thought it smoke. I am very glad I no longer suffer from serious hay fever. The sharp, acid-green leaves of the very first deciduous trees punctuate the woodlands, arriving in one day, unfurling their flag and claiming this early spring sun for their own.

In the evening, before the sun slips behind the Vercors, she backlights the catkins on the hazel and, especially, the aspen. They shimmer and dance, a host of wriggling, silvery caterpillars, each a-sparkle with promise. Then, suddenly, the sun has gone, and the temperature begins to drop, fast.

These mountains, where the plates of Eurasia and Africa meet, divide the weather of Europe into the wetter north and dryer south. Each peak a part of a whole, each valley a connection to the next, every path, rock, marmot, chamois, or snowflake playing its own role in the drama.

It is good to be here, at the start of spring. It is good to feel a part of a whole.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Cercal, Portugal. February, 2021.

The bedroom—my office—window is open, despite the downpour. At this side of the building it mostly flies beyond the eaves, lashing into the orange grove and obscuring all but the nearest hill.

Such is the threat of nest theft, a single stork stands guard, head down into the wind and rain, sodden and bedraggled and clearly remembering a time when its ancestors all left for Africa every winter, before the lure of landfill scavenging and warming European winters meant some chose to stay year-long.

When there is a break in the rain its partner arrives and, after a brief clatter of beaks, display and reaffirmation of their bond, they switch places. In my mind’s eye I suddenly suspect whichever partner is no longer on the nest is under a bridge somewhere, standing around with his or her friends, chatting idly, complaining about the rain, talk of tasty insects, and whispering of Africa, as they all wait to switch positions. Maybe they loiter together in bus shelters, or beneath the same ancient, spreading cork oak.

Today, the wind and the rain are back, piling in from the Atlantic to crash into these hills. It is hard to remember how dusty and dry it can be in summer, or how last year there were months and months with no rain at all, and barely a cloud to be seen. This direction may bring water—lots of much needed water—but thankfully it doesn’t bring the cold of January. The days are warming, the nights too.

A few days ago, the sun appeared: sun and showers, rainbows and warmth. The clouds were majestic galleons, sailing across the blue, the rain sporadic, excitingly fleeting, pouring fast and true, before retreating in a gentle, misty steam. I stood in the kitchen, making a cup of tea, when a movement caught my eye. When you have watched birds and animals (and, indeed, trees and flowers and butterflies and…) for as long as I have, you sometimes only need a glimpse, especially when there is movement involved. Something ancient in my head, something instinctive kicks in, linking the pattern with memory, with knowledge.

Swallow?

I turned to check and, sure enough, my instinctive, sideways snatched glance was right. The first swallow of the year, on February the 7th. The following day, another snatched glimpse, another check, two house martins, chasing insects. Summer is whispering to the birds too.

Now, as I redraft this piece, it is again raining, hard, harder than before, and has been for many hours. This morning, I heard a huge crash from outside, and the sound of falling rocks. I looked out and it didn’t take long to realise that part of an old wall of a nearby roofless ruin had collapsed. I watched as another huge chunk of stone, mortar and earth crashed to the ground, went to fetch Aurélie, and together we watched another portion crumble. The scent drifted up on a minor rippling shockwave, a scent of ancient places, freshly disturbed, earth long hidden, secrets whispered and trapped, left by masons centuries dead. The oldest part of this village is the church area, and this building backs on to the square surrounding it. Old, and very wet.

It makes me think, about our own walls, how the damp and mould outline the courses and individual blocks. How long before this building goes the same way? How long before the damp in my own bones makes me crumble? Oddly, perhaps, I never find these thoughts too morbid or disturbing. After all, each atom of our beings has travelled for longer than we can envisage, has passed through many stages: there a great mountain, now long worn away, then a huge sauropod, a dragonfly, a tiny mouse-like creature, back to dust and earth once more, before being sucked in and absorbed by plant and animal, a recycling which never ends, a story incomprehensibly vast. How is that not incredible? How can that be morbid?

No wall lasts forever, nothing does. And this is to be celebrated.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Cercal, Portugal. February, 2021.

There are worlds within worlds: look closer and you will see.

Here, in The Alentejo, it is the season of rain. Heavy, insistent Atlantic rain, or fine, cloud-like cover, blanketing all in moisture, swaddling in grey. Ridge-lines vanish, to reappear as suggestions, trees as spectres, and the woods mere hints. When they do appear, these ancient hillsides are clad entirely in emerald, gone is any vestige of brown, any trace of the bleaching of the long hot summer. Instead, all things grow, fast: from grass to trees, mould to citrus, and lambs to calves, they are all flourishing.

The rain, coupled with winter bus schedules and lockdown routines, means there is little chance to enjoy the outdoors as I would like. The trails around here are fantastic for walking and cycling, but in this weather their unpaved nature makes both activities a sticky but slippy disaster waiting to happen. The apartment becomes a vessel on a sea of rain and green, sheets of water passing by, when they do not seep through the concrete and tiles.

Yet there is much to see, if only you look. The storks are back, a war for the best nests underway, with much clattering, swooping, and delicate battle. To gain territory is one thing, to hold it in this weather, another—the present victors are miserable, sodden and bedraggled birds, heads down, feathers drooping and dripping. Beneath, the ground is strewn with the fallen cannonballs of oranges, some already green or white with mould, others fresh and tempting. There is so much fruit, just falling and rolling down the streets and lanes, like so many escaped balls.

The birdsong is gaining in intensity, with the blackbird, the blackcap and something I do not know currently the most vocal. They are joined by others, occasional voices adding to the chorus, sometimes startlingly so, a strange new song trilling through the window, but nothing to be seen in the grove below. It will not be long before the first migrants reappear, depending on what is going on in Africa, the winds, and the rains and the outlook for the coming season. Perhaps some of them are already here.

Look closer, and other worlds are present too. The rooftops here are nearly all covered in orange tiles, which fade with age, slipping into burnt ochres and deeper, brown-reds. Even as the clay ages, the tiles gain other colours—the greens, greys, oranges, yellows and startling whites of moss and lichen, cloaking and coating, spreading and demonstrating the cleanliness of this air, some of the best in the world. The irony that, outside, the air pollution index is at 0 but, inside, the constant battle against the spores and spreading black mould means that, on days we cannot open the windows, the air just feels wrong, is not lost on me. The very damp and freshness which brings this welcome breathability, means the mould flourishes.

The lichens here remind me that despite lockdown, despite the inability to get out, there is much to learn, much to observe. These are tough colonisers, withstanding pouring rain and big temperature fluctuations. I dread to think how hot those tiles get on a sunny summer’s day. Yet they are also a wonderful indicator of the health of the air, pollution will kill many of them.

Across this microflora ranges microfauna. The insect life here is rich, and there are times I wish I could take the time to observe this more, to take macro shots of the beetles, the flies, the bees and all the other tiny crawling and flying things. Entire epics can be imagined, tales of these tiny worlds, of their dangers and their viewpoints.

Yesterday, I saw a Thing. I do not know what it was, but it was thin and brightly striped with reds, black, and yellow. No longer than my little finger nail, it sat on the wall outside, as I made tea, then it was gone. Then I noticed the first mosquito of the year, sitting on the kitchen window, staring in, seemingly looking longingly at me. Or so I like to imagine—and imagine I do, for stories tie all this together.

(If you look hard enough, you will see nature staring back, everywhere.)

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Cercal, Portugal, January, 2021 and Rendall, Orkney, April, 2016

Specks of seedlings are strewn across the empty plant pots on the balcony. The flowers or salad they held are now mostly long gone, with the exception of a single nasturtium and a sprawling and exceedingly hardy lettuce, reverted to its more natural self.

These green shoots were not planted, but found their way to the available compost. Here and there they have already grown: sow thistle, nettle, dandelion and others, all ready for the coming warmth. Despite being on the fourth floor, on a protected, north-facing balcony, the seeds have found a home. Nature, remember, will always find a way. Brought by wind or bird droppings, each verdant, hopeful delight is a reminder that life continues, no matter how pressing or stressing the news.

The seedlings wait, the air is too cold right now for further growth, frost wreathing patterns on the windows and dusting all with fine sugar icing. This may be close to as far south as Iberia goes, but that does not mean winter cannot wreath all in her chill embrace. Inside, with no heating, the air is 9°C (48°F)—even with a newly purchased oil radiator and a handful of candles, the single room we heat rarely hits 18°C (64°F). I knew this before we arrived in Portugal last year, that the colder months mean layers and hats, scarves, gloves and extra bedding are essential, yet to experience it is different. I am colder inside, here, than when I lived wild in a natural shelter, even when the Scottish winter hit hard, with temperatures far below freezing and soil like rock.

Yet the green scatter on the balcony shows life, as do the owl calls in the cold night, or the clatter of the returning storks, or flurry of small birds in the orchard and orange grove. When the sun is not concealed, her warmth can be felt, strong, ready to work her magic once more. There is a reason all the old houses have stone benches outside. The line of frost on the rooftops moves rapidly with the changing light, wintry sundial marking the passage of the earth through space. It is possible to stand and watch it melt as the sun rises higher. Clouds dance across the blues and greens, reds, oranges, yellows and greys of the wide sky.

Once, on a dog walk in Orkney, on an April morning—the first time I had returned to spend a night since leaving as an 18 year old—I stood and watched the sun rise, at the edge of a similarly expansive sky. This is something I have done many times, and it surprises me that more people do not also allow themselves this wonder yet, this time, the memory has stayed with me, fresh, strong and magical. One of those moments in life, which I shall never forget.

Across the bay, somewhere behind the island of Shapinsay, the sun appeared, fast and flowing, at a speed which I have never before or since witnessed. I watched a deep red ball appear, a sliver, then a segment, then a wedge, growing rapidly, my camera forgotten in hand, even Orlando the dog surprisingly silent and still, also watching, witnessing.

To be reminded that the earth still spins, that the morning comes and the night returns, to see these things in action, through a lattice of frost, or a scatter of seedlings, or a parliament of owls—this is deep and ancient magic. We just need to use our senses, to be a part of a whole far beyond the scope of our comprehension and remember: warmth can be found in the coldest of places.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Isère, France. December, 2020.

The air grips the lungs from the inside, mountain-cold and surprisingly dry, despite the thick fog weaving tendrils down streets and throwing a blanket over the valley. There are snow-covered peaks in all directions, but I only know this through memory, they are lost in the darkening grey.

Sound is deadened, snow and mist absorbing, a crow call might come from any direction and none, the alarm of the blackbird echoing off unseen walls. The air itself smells of snow: dusty and ancient.

Here, a persimmon laden with bright baubles, there the yellow of a tenacious aspen leaf.

I cannot see them, but I imagine the ibex and chamois on their ridges, digging down through the windblown drifts, finding the food to sustain themselves through the winter. For winter, this is. It began to snow the night before I arrived, which was kind of nature, as if she wanted the mountains to look their very best—once they finally reappear, foggy curtains rolled back and stupendous reflected sun spotlighting peak, crevasse and cliff.

Time and distance are twisted and folded here, maps need expert contouring, the eye translating the lines into the three-dimensional. Nearby, wolves have again been sighted, returning to an area they left years ago. Where one wolf is seen, there are others, many others, and camera traps have shown this to be the case. Whispers of approaching brown bears, the hidden, practically-invisible lynx, the great earth-movers of wild boar, and even the spreading European jackal—all are close by, as the crow flies. As this Crow walks, however, the trails and tracks into the high slopes, cliffs and wooded valleys above, would take considerably longer, and much further.

That’s not to say these creatures do not venture down—they do and, during the confinement earlier this year, some did so in numbers. I like this. It is oddly reassuring, how quickly nature fills a void.

Snow is an incredible canvas, whether to learn to track, or to simply decorate with footprints or designs. It is wiped clean by melt, revitalised by fresh fallen crystals, ever-changing and, to me, always a wonder. Here, stories are told and retold, new ones recorded afresh, each mark is just a tiny portion of an incomprehensible whole, yet each mark is also crucial—the tale would not be complete without it.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Cercal, Portugal. November, 2020.

November is usually a time of grey, of bleaching and the last of the chlorophyll leaching away as winter drags her blanket over all. Some stubborn leaves remain, to fall later in gale or frost, others have long gone, tumbled to drifts or pulled by rivulets into streams into rivers into the ocean. Everything is muted: burnt sienna, brown madder, burnt umber, brown ochre; names from the paints and pencils of childhood.

Yet, here, in the Alentejo, the opposite is happening. Summer was the browning, the hot sun and months with barely any rain drying all, water only available to those with long roots or clever placing near the streams and seeps. In the last week of October, with every passing day and, at times, hour, the hillsides and fields have greened: from olive green, through cobalt green, to the brighter sap green, avocado or mint, punctuated with the acid flash of citrus or the vibrant arc of a rainbow. These new shades are washed over the view, the land absorbing the rain and mist and cloud, the plants responding.

Our skies are no longer clear and blue forever, instead there are storms and showers, constant rain or sudden, tableaux of clouds and tapestry of greys across which are swept returning storks, our resident Bonelli’s eagle, or wintering hen harrier and red kite. Breakfast has become the time for birding, each morning seemingly providing a new sighting, something from the north, a snow bird seeking sanctuary, replacing those who have decided a sojourn in Africa is sensible.

The daylight hours are fading, true, but when I see photographs posted on twitter of a setting sun in the UK, I am reminded that we maintain longer winter days than much of Europe and, for that, I am grateful. Sun is a healing power to me, especially in the darker months.

The air is laden with the scent of wet earth, infused with growing things. The days of eucalyptus tang and drowsy cork oak warmth are gone, replaced by a wildness, a primeval sense of nature in charge, new growth and new, old magic. Spells whisper at the edge of hearing, each new blade of grass or tendril of vine carrying another word, another verse, and soon the emerald enchantment will be complete.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Several people commented and liked the Note (thanks!), and I know it is a popular, easily identified, plant. When asked what recipe I used, I started to type a reply on my phone this morning—then thought it might be of interest to more of you, so decided to send this instead. Also, Substack has just (finally) introduced recipe cards, so I was interested to see how that might work/look.

Definitely an experiment! I will undoubtedly turn a swift recipe/list into something longer than it perhaps needs to be, but with more flavour and depth. As usual, I’m recording the voiceover, so you can listen if you prefer.

If this doesn’t show up in your email client, ensure you click through to have a peek.

There we go! My first recipe here, in my own special style, probably not using the ‘cuisine’ ‘diet’ ‘category’ etc sections as they’re meant to be used, but hey!

I hope this is useful, interesting, or just fun? I find there is a deep and ancient joy in turning wild ingredients into something to use in the kitchen, it connects us to the past and to the present, both. Do please send this to anyone you know who lives near bear garlic!

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What do you think to this recipe? Do you also make bear garlic pesto? Or anything else from the plant? What’s your favourite foraged ingredient in the year?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed this and can afford to, you can send a one-off tip via this button:

Send a tip/cup of tea!

You can also subscribe, if you don’t already. As of 2026, I won’t be paywalling anything new, other than my fiction once a story is finished. As such, all paid subscriptions are a means to support me and my work, if you can afford it. I’m going to be sharing things this year which I think might help a lot of people, and hiding them behind a paywall does not sit well with me.

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And, as ever, thank you so much for reading, enjoy getting out to forage!

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

Cercal, Portugal. October, 2020.

The world is full of tracks and paths and routes, many invisible to our eyes, currents brushing the face of things, whispers, yesterday’s wind across the earth below. As I write, I am beneath one of these hidden roads, the exodus of birds heading south to Africa for the winter vast and, mostly, unseen. Much as I would like to, I cannot spare the time to sit on the balcony, binoculars in hand, watching for bird after bird, whether solitary, or in huge sweeps like the swallows, or the veritable melee of martins we keep receiving, day after day.

One early morning in late September, I looked outside to see perhaps three hundred swallows frantically feeding, ahead of coming rain, swirling low and hurtling past the window, snatching insect after insect. Our swallows had already departed, bar some of the rebellious young, perhaps twenty or thirty of them, and I knew the migration from the north had begun in earnest. The previous night, the temperatures in Scotland had dropped to their lowest for September in around twenty years—no wonder the birds had gone. On twitter I saw tweet after tweet, each mentioning their swallows, a fixture on the wires for weeks, had departed, vanished in the night. I knew where they were; they were here in Alentejo, feeding up, then resting upon our wires, in the trees and the bamboo, waiting for the rain to pass before they were gone again, next stop, potentially, north Africa.

Our nights are cooler, the land breathing mist as moisture returns after the months of dusty summer. The days are still hot, with temperatures approaching 30°C (86°F). As the moon waxed to full, the owls began holding a parliament, calls from every direction, with several species represented. The sky is bright planets, the moon painting clouds with silver filigree and making ghostly, magical shadow puppetry irresistible. As she wanes, the stars shine ever brighter, distant furnaces funnelled through unimaginable time and distance, to appear as pinpricks to our eyes, decorate our dark skies with heroes, legends, and beasts, cast a skein above, a net to guard us while we sleep, strands and knots connected by imagination and our position in a vast whole.

On the 25th of October 2020, the clocks fall back an hour. Without Covid and Brexit, this would have been the last time this happened in Portugal, as the clocks were scheduled to stay on summer time after changing next March. However, this has been postponed, for now, as the EU deals with these other issues.

Throughout this, unknowing and uncaring, the birds will continue to fly, using the sun, using the earth’s magnetic field, navigating their way via invisible track-ways in the sky, stopping to feed in this insect-rich corner of the continent, where the plains and ocean meet the ancient hills and forests.

It is good to be reminded, good to remember—we are all linked by invisible bonds, secret ways between places, paths between time, more threads tying us together than anything trying to pull us apart.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Subscribe now

The Alps, Isère, France. September 2020.

It comes not through taste or sight, sound, or touch, or scent, but through something other, another one of our senses the majority somehow forget we possess. It is a pressing down inside, something foreboding, ancient, deep and utterly, utterly untamed.

The clouds build, towers of moisture tumbling and billowing, trying to outdo one another, ever higher, faster and faster. Their bases widen, their tops level and they begin to move together, energy gathering, a meeting of lovers, their dance electric.

Here, in the glacial valleys of the French Alps, it is a time of storms. My head often hurts a warning, my brain whispering of coming downpour, sometimes long before I even notice the genesis of the clouds. Then azure skies are darkened, summer glare disappearing into dim murk and sudden, swift, gunmetal grey. My head continues to be tightened within atmospheric vice; wine helps, paracetamol surprisingly less effective.

Then the first distant rumble is felt through the air, through the ground, inside my chest. Another. And another. Before five minutes have passed, the mountains funnel the storm, echoing from cliff-face to cliff-face, ricocheting from building to building, cracks and booms, or the deepest bass you could possibly hear, rolling, loud, long, at the very edge of hearing.

They say that the buildings of Grenoble and this corner of Isère are utilitarian, simply because how could they possibly compete with the surrounding beauty? Yet the same, otherwise nondescript, sheer surfaces of tower blocks and modernity come into their own during a storm, channeling the sound, adding reverb and returning the same thunder from an entirely unexpected direction. The effect is powerful, a reflection of the sheer thumping beauty of the storm itself.

Then the gap between peals lengthens and the centre of the downpour moves away as quickly as it arrived. Thousands of litres of water have been dumped in the valley and on the steep slopes all around the city. This all feeds into the Isère—a river of considerable power and danger, never placid—which, in turn, flows to the mighty Rhône.

Yet, even with the funnelling of storm along the valley, this is not the end. Often, the shape of the earth itself will play a surprise hand of its own, the clouds bouncing—a mountain and storm pinball—back into the direction from which it came.

Then it is spent, and the air is fresh, my head recovered, the loam and soil rich in my nostrils, puddles and pools begin to gently steam in the summer warmth and birds bathe and drink their fill.

I love storms, no matter where I am. It is the same sensation as when I climb to a high place, or stand in the shadow of a wonder of nature—I feel small and, by feeling small, I grow.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first is to take out a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025 I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

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Cercal, Portugal, August 2020.

No place has but four seasons, and Alentejo is no different. Summer, yes, of course it is, but it is no longer the days of the wildflower-rich, high-sun summer, nor the screaming-swift summer, nor the misty, haar-wreathed nights summer. Now is the time for the wind, for warning of extreme fire risk, of small but perfectly succulent blackberries, bursting with flavour, of the nights cooling, and the ever-swelling green globes of the next crop of oranges, hiding in plain sight. This is the summer which whispers of autumn.

The swifts have gone. For a few weeks their numbers had halved, the adults bidding tchau! to their progeny, leaving them to swoop and swallow, to carve the air with new wings, calling to their classmates and then, suddenly, disappear themselves. When this happened, I am unsure. I just noticed they were all gone on the 1st of August, the skies still speckled with swallows and martins, but silent of swifts. The summer whispers of autumn.

At night, the owls call, and the comet has passed, no longer a feature to be admired with naked eyes or, even better, with binoculars. All ages of change have a fiery-tailed star, and ours is no different. I wonder what those in this corner of the world thought of the comet’s last appearance, 6800 years ago? This was also a period of great change, hunter-fisher-gathering beginning to be replaced by farming. Here, in this period, the very first Dolmen, or Cromlech, tombs anywhere in the world were first constructed (and we do not really know if they were tombs, or something else). It is tempting to wonder what this same comet meant to those long ago people. For me, it was a chance to be reminded of how fleeting life is, how marvellous and how wonderful it is to be such a small part of an intricate whole and, I suspect, they felt a similar way. The owls still hoot, as their ancestors undoubtedly did then; they call to one another across the valley, reciting the story of summer, of a summer now whispering of autumn.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first way is to take out a paid subscription.

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The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

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I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025 I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

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Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’1 nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

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Cercal, Portugal. July 2020.

Time, at some points and places, stretches. Days seem longer, the mind translates the passage of the sun in ways which are not, perhaps, normal. When I was eight, my family moved to Stromness, Orkney. The month was March, so the daylight was practically the same across the single face of our globe yet, as the months passed and I ventured out to play and explore, to search for lost gold in the burns, plan raft voyages to the Amazon, and torment the bull in the field below Brinkie’s Brae, the evenings grew beyond anything I had ever witnessed.

Time stretched. The sun would be high in the sky, long before I woke, and would still be there when I went to bed. It was as though our relocation had gifted me with unlimited playtime, unlimited potential adventure. This was, of course, before that first, dark, and long winter and subsequent SADness.

For me, as for many of you, I suspect, the last few months have also stretched. Think about this time last year, where you were, what you were doing—it seems half a lifetime away (and yet, strangely, also near enough to touch). I am fortunate, in that I live in the northern hemisphere and, even as I was locked down, the daylight extended. Not by Orkney standards, nowhere near, but each evening was brighter longer, each morning the sun higher in the sky than the previous. Now that the solstice has passed, the days already feel shorter, the screaming of the swifts more frantic, as their insect-snatching hours condense, the moment of departure for Africa ever closer. For this year’s young, they will not land for nearly three years.

Imagine that—sleeping on the wing, never landing, never stopping, constant movement. Nature is ridiculous and wonderful and inspiring.

I try to maintain a healthy balance of positivity in this place, to resist my natural tendency to raise uncomfortable, urgent and, I’d argue, essential questions. At least on balance—asking these questions is important. In the earlier drafts of this paragraph I moved from the joy of nature being so inspiring to the bigger issue, to the damage we wreak and sow. I have edited this out, it is a long section, all about our place on this planet, living in a tiny strip of breathable gas, on a floating and equally narrow section of rock. I shall think about how best to use this but, for now, I’d just like to reiterate—nature is ridiculous and wonderful and inspiring.

Finally

If you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support my work here. The first is to take out a paid subscription.

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

If you enjoyed this letter and wish to share it with others, please do so! I love it when someone shares my work.

Share

I also love it when you comment on a piece—really, really love it. Although I always read and appreciate these comments, during 2025, I was not as good at responding as quickly as I would like but, seeing as my word of the year for 2026 is ‘communication’, I like to think that will soon change.

Leave a comment

Finally, many thanks for reading. I truly appreciate each and every one of you who does.

One of the possible reasons I believe my letter has not grown recently is simply because I have not been sending it with the regularity I did in 2024 or in 2023. Or, for that matter, at any point since 2019.

I’ve been sharing a letter for a long time now (6+ years) and writing on the internet for a lot, lot longer (my first steps on the World Wide Web were actually pre-WWW, at school back in the early 1990s) and 2025 was the quietest I have been online since those days, especially if we include email or messages.

The why behind this is what this piece is all about.

Why Go Quiet?

In short, there are two principal reasons I have not been sharing online as much as I did previously.

The first is one of personal development, of a sort. I have taken the time to examine my wiring beneath the board, to look at why I am as I am, to work out the details, then to try and see a way forward which will not replicate the boom/bust/depression/burnout cycle I have followed in the past.

I will continue to share things about this process, which is, of course (of curse, as I just mistyped, also works admirably well), ongoing. All self-development should be—we should all keep asking questions and all keep listening to the answers even—or especially—when they make us feel uncomfortable.

The second reason is, well, all of this *the author waves around generally at the world*. We are living in dark, dangerous times. That is a simple fact. And the dark and the dangerous seeps into everything we are, whether we intend it to, or not.

Imagine a blind man, who happens to also be deaf, walking slowly in a straight line. He doesn’t know he is walking to a crumbling cliff edge.

Now, imagine a blind man who is no longer deaf and, although he can hear the sound of approaching waves crashing ahead, keeps on walking.

Now, the man is also no longer blind—a miracle! Science!—and he can hear the waves and see the cliff edge ahead, feel that spray on his face, and yet he keeps walking.

Others, wise people, normal people, your neighbours, friends and family, are all nearby, shouting at him to stop walking but, yes, he keeps walking.

The walk feels familiar, each step like the last, right up until the ground gives way beneath his feet and he falls, faster, gathering pace, to smash upon the rocks below.

That man is, rather obviously in this ridiculous extended metaphor, humanity, at this point in time. Today.

We are no longer blind and deaf, we have all those voices telling us what is happening to the only home our species has ever had—and, at this rate, may well ever have. And yet, we keep not only walking, but pick up the pace a little.

I’m sure if you’ve ever read any post on Substack (or elsewhere) from one of the various scientists, or climatologists, or even someone ‘normal’, saying ‘guys, maybe we should rein this in a little?’ you’ll also have picked up on some of the frankly ridiculous comments these posts receive. Some are horrible, vile, cruel. Others just plain laughable. Still others try very hard to manipulate the figures to show something they do not show, irrevocable proof that climate collapse is just a gold-plated hoax.

Some of those voices, the naysayers, are probably not even human. Russia has been quietly waging a war against the world over the last decade or more. A war fought through fingertips. Fair play to them, they saw the future, and they knew the power of words in that future—trust the Russians to understand how words and stories are truly powerful, after all. Their literature was perhaps a warning, a hint of the troll factories and deliberate misinformation to come.

In the First Worldwide Story War, Russia has certainly won.

Many nations are only just waking to the fact they’ve lost control of their own messaging; that it doesn’t matter what they say, the damage is already done. Trust is gone, belief has evaporated, and hope is somewhere down the back of the sofa, picking up dust and fluff, perhaps adhering to a sticky, lost delicacy, slowly returning to a sugary base.

Only, there are those who keep going, who seek to redress the balance in the ways they know how. Some share their practical tips for preparing for disaster, whether on a local, regional, or national (or even global) level, others talk about the data, what it demonstrates, what it might mean to us all, and how it ties in with yet more data. Still others share what is precious and beautiful, what is real, what triggers emotions, and reminds us we are human—the good parts of being human.

Which reminds me of this Note I saw recently, which hits the mark perfectly.

All of these are valid, all are crucial (I never understand those who criticise others for sharing beauty and wonder when times are dark—this is precisely when such things are most important and, maybe it’s my British upbringing, but see also: humour), what is essential is that we all work out our own path forward, we all look at where we are, then seriously consider the road ahead, and how best we can navigate it, sudden twists, washouts, failing bridges, cracking surface, ice, rain, storm, deep snow, and all.

What is My Path?

For a long time, I’ve tried very hard to keep sharing a positive message, to share with you the beauty, majesty, and wonder of nature, or how we can perhaps reclaim our place as a part of it.

Over the last couple of years that belief, that urge to keep fighting the good fight, has increasingly wavered.

I had to pick my battles (NOTE: I really dislike military, violent metaphors but, horrifically, there is now no denying or getting away from the fact we are actually in the fight for the very lives of our species.), and the battles I chose were for my own mind, my own way forward, mentally, emotionally, physically.

After all, if I am not whole and strong, then it becomes harder to help others. Not impossible, but harder. As we are told—always put on your own oxygen mask first.

Now, after an extended break of a sort—from talking about things here, certainly—I feel I am capable of returning. Slowly, at least. And I’m not quite there, yet:

How I continue to fight, however, is still something I am considering. I think I have a few options, which I shall discuss below.

The Options

The problem as I see it, as with many of the world’s issues, stems to money. I simply cannot afford the time to write essay after essay for free, or next to no financial recompense. It isn’t viable. I do not have the time to do so, sadly. Yet the idea of increasingly paywalling work leaves me cold.

I thought I was being clever with how I paywalled things—take my fiction, for example, where I share story after story, novel after novel, for free, only paywalling after the whole is shared (and, in the case of some of those stories, no paywall at all). Much of my oldest work here is paywalled, true, but in reality there are very, very few people who ever go back through an archive with a fine-tooth comb—no one really has the time (thanks! capitalism!).

So, going forward, what should I do?

There are several options I can see:

• Maintain the current system, only paywalling certain things after a time, with occasional paid subscriber-only posts; including links to my Kofi account (which has proved more useful than paid subscriptions over the last year) in each post.

• Remove the paywall completely, which will also mean removing all my fiction, as I shall be selling that in book form very soon, and never paywalling a thing again.

• Keep the fiction paywalled, perhaps with bonus material if people pay for a subscription to read it, and make everything else free from hereon-in, with the option to subscribe ‘simply’ to support my work1.

As I am soon releasing some of my fiction in book-format, as mentioned here, my current thinking is to go with the third option.

There is another reason for this, one which is mildly irritating, and I feel a bit annoyed to have to share. Substack itself—the platform which shares this letter and Notes, their twitteresque feed—no longer drives discovery as it once undoubtedly did.

I’m not saying this simply based on my own experience (again, see the Third State of The Nest I shared back in November, 2025), but also what others are reporting. I’m not sure who now profits from either Notes, recommendations, or any other method Substack used to use, but it doesn’t seem to be me or almost anyone else I talk to. (EDIT: I was literally about to send this letter when Substack crashed completely, telling me I had no posts saved, whether posted (should be 319), queued (3), or drafts (15). I waited for half an hour but, as it did not come back in that time, I also could not reply to comments, as I had intended. There’s definitely an irony in this, somewhere.)

This happens: platforms deteriorate over time. I am used to that—not that it makes it any easier, of course. At present, I shall keep using Substack, but I shall also be adding another method of sharing my words, that of a good, old-fashioned, website.

I shall launch this soon, to go hand-in-hand with the launch of my fiction books and, going forward, each letter will be copied there, too, with some older work also uploaded and shared there.

As I work on that site, I shall also be updating the pages and tabs of my Substack home, too. The ‘Start Here’ page, for example, is now out of date. I’d like to have all of this done in the next few weeks, if I can squeeze out the time for it, I think doing so will help lay a solid foundation for the other work to come.

These Things Are Me

As much as a part of me is irritated at the increasing lack of discoverability on Substack, I do want to keep continuing to share words with you about the subjects I love or find interesting. That is the bedrock of this space, and will also underpin the work on my website. Nature, ancestral skills, fiction, writing and reading, neurodivergence—these things are me, they are the blocks from which I am carved and, I think, the things you want to read. One thing which will always help immensely is if you the reader take the time to share my work. I am so very touched when you do so, thank you.

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Our world is experiencing change on a scale never before seen.

That point bears repeating. This change is conceivably across every facet of our (and the planet’s) very existence.

In September last year, I shared an essay called The Balance of Hope, but I only shared it on my Substack homepage, pinning it there and never sending it as a letter. I wanted to see if that was a useful way to share my work. At the time, I said this:

This post is something of an experiment. By not sending it out to my subscriber list, I suspect not many people will read, comment upon, or share it. However, I am more than willing to be proven wrong!

I actually did have some great comments on this piece, and it was shared a little, but it was only read 148 times. Which is not great, when I have 2285 subscribers and 5215 followers on Notes. For reference, I sent this piece, Build The Wall, the day after and, whilst it only had a 29% open rate, it was viewed 1060 times, 10x the other.

As such, after I send this letter, the one you are reading now, I am also going to share that unsent essay, too. It goes into much greater detail about the issues I discuss above, with talk of hope, of direction, and reference to the work and words of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is a longer read but, I think, one which contains words which might help, if you are also finding our times difficult (“difficult” here is probably an understatement?).

One other thing The Balance of Hope shows is how I have not moved forward in my own work here as I had hoped at the time—not outwardly, at least. Five months later, I am sending similar words to you now, after all. One reason for this is probably due to my day-by-day sharing of A Fall In Time, and all the work that entailed, even if it was mostly simply copying and pasting. In 2024, A Fall In Time likely increased my readership by 40%, perhaps more. In 2025, I actually lost 50 people from the balance of subscribers in the same timeframe. That was a little demoralising.

However, I have made substantial progress on offline projects, those which will only be readable once they are published in a more traditional manner (traditional here being both self-published and, with luck, and a lot of work, traditionally published).

I have also made substantial progress on me. And that is not to be underestimated in this dark and dangerous time. My emotional, mental, and physical health is better now than at any point in perhaps four years.2 I can safely say I’ve now firmly attached my own oxygen mask, which leaves me with free hands, able to help others once more.

This process of focussing on learning how to move forward as myself has also meant I can actually focus better on what needs to be done, something I have struggled with in recent years, whether self-work, paid work, or work which will pay in some shape or form in the longterm—and all of this feels hopeful. It feels like spring, whispering in the forest.

Finally

As I have mentioned recently, in my series of weekly letters sharing snippets from the past, Witness Notes, my word for this year is communication. (Last year, it was compassion, which worked very well, indeed.)

As such, I am trying to reply to your comments faster, although this is still a work in progress. I am also working back through the comments you’ve left on my pieces last year, which I still have yet to reply to—and I am also beginning to read your own work more, too, engaging here and there. I have the whole year to get to the point I’d like to be, where I can reply quickly, where I can send out emails, messages, and letters, even look at other ways to communicate (anyone use Substack Live? How did it go for you? What about the chat function?).

I love and appreciate every comment you take the time to share. In our attention-based economy, the simple fact you do comment is a wonder. Thank you.

Have you also been struggling to see a path ahead in these dark times? Are you deliberately seeking out signs from nature for connection and grounding (I have noted down the date for the first snowdrop, first purple archangel, first drumming woodpecker, first morning and evening chorus, and first [probably rather cold] honeybee)? How have you strengthened yourself for what comes next?

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If you have enjoyed reading my words, I offer two current, direct ways to support my work here. The first is to take out a paid subscription—as I say above, this is a super way to support my work. (Just subscribing, even if it is as a free subscriber, is also a wonderful thing. Thank you.)

Subscribe now

The second way to support me here is to use my Kofi button/link to send a tip of any amount. I think this is easier for many people, in these tough times, as it doesn’t feel the same as a monthly or annual subscription.

Buy me a nice cup of tea!

Leaving a comment, sharing my words, subscribing, these are things I do not take for granted. I appreciate that you can do these things, too, that the technology makes it easier for you to do so and, if I do move my letter somewhere one day, it will have to be somewhere which still allows this with ease.

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Thanks for reading.