Month: June 2025

Overcast, muted, today. The sea mumbles, a few dogs on the beach come over for a nosey. The red rocks here in this small outcrop are different from everything else around. Contorted and spewed, this particular ancient volcanic seam, now held fast, petrified, tumbling toward the sea. From the beach looking back it takes the form of a slain dinosaur, spiny platelets marking the passage of its body. Seals and shags keep watch. The Bass Rock flattens to a tanker inching its way along the horizon.

There they are, the swallows, flitting between the station roof and the railway track. A warning about the midges from a waitress who says when she lived at Rannoch she would even find them in her knickers. As you do. A lone bumblebee fills the whole moor with its buzzing. Slipping as I cross the burn, wet feet again. The rowan greets me as I climb on to my drawing knoll. Standing on a large granite boulder as if it were the prow of a ship, I look out, beyond all of myself to the great unfurling moor, and feel as if this sky, these hills, this bog is enough for any one person. Sitting down I pull out drawing paper and a plastic freezer bag that should contain pencils, crayons, ink and brushes. Instead however, I look to see a bag of cooked , cold chipolatas. I stare at them for a long time, unsure as what I am thinking and when finally a thought does arrive the question is whether I might be able to draw with a sausage ? Really? Really. Rootling around further in the depths of my rucksack produces the art materials, Drawing, following the line of hills, brushing sun and shadow, finding the rhythm of Rannoch that sounds across the bogland, I close my eyes and fall in.