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Montrose 2016-2017.

The river meets the sea here. In a sycamore tree a small birds nest sways. A pilot boat heads out to a ship anchored beyond the lighthouse. High tide. Railway sleepers, pallets, geese flying south. Dog shit, tinsel, good morning, aye right. Voices carry across the water, boat engines, hammers, hi viz. Children run as the school bell rings. Old men in caps, hands buried deep in their coat pockets. Out for a paper, filling a day. January. Forgotten. And a thin sun falls for a moment on a line of white washed shirts, a brattle of pegged seagulls bursting to take flight.

The swans woolly bugle funnels up the river to the idle North sea ships waiting out the lull. Orange curtains twitch, brick chimneys lean into a wind that blatters the outhouse doors. Unhinging. Passing by a conversation ‘You never tell me anything’, she says. ‘Ask me anything, I don’t have secrets’, he says, holding out his arms. Mudlarking. Under the bridge a cuttlefish bone gleams amongst bladderwrack while in the fields above the town the red ploughed earth skewls toward a warming Spring sun.

Leith – 2017.

Crow black skies bring the threat of rain. The wind hustles fallen leaves on a tramped on can of Irn Bru along the street. Sitting on the bench at the ‘Fit o’ the Walk’ I meet an elderly woman. She tells me she stays in sheltered housing along the way but used to stay in flats by Leith Links. Drug dealers lived in the flat above hers and sometimes the addresses would get confused and she would get unwelcome visitors. She says she would open her door and say….’This is the brothel, the drugs are upstairs.’ I laugh. So does she. Pigeons huddle in the lee of a tenement roof. The woman tells me she is waiting for her friend to arrive. ‘She’ll be wearing her slippers. She says they’re boots, but they’re not , they’re slippers. Indoor slippers.’ A man begs for money for his children, a woman shouts…..’Let me tell YOU something….’, again and again until I can no longer hear. I continue on my walk. It starts to rain.

Cold. Rowan trees sctter red confetti on passers- by. Lost gloves and lonely hats placed on window sills. Betty tells me her uncle had been a hairdresser in Leith and was so small he had to stand on an orange box to cut hair. Newspaper clippings on the wall of the cafe. Mince and tatties and mushy peas. How cold is it ? Very, but not enough to turn on the heating. A young woman shouts ‘……why is everything shit ?’ Stockings wrinkle below the knee. Two soft fried eggs. she’ll make herself a hot water bottle when she gets in. She squeezes herself at the thought and smiles. Outside the day moves on quietly.

An unseasonal warm wind. Tenement windows are pushed open. A woman leans out, arms folded, watching whats going on, more a picture of summer than December. I meet a pacifist anarchist Polish man in a charity shop. He says he was depressed in Poland and moved to Scotland because he likes the multiculturalism here. He is attempting to display a box of crockery but doubts his aesthetic skills. Segulls glide the currents of air, Christmas lights reflect in the puddles at the kerb. A woman shows me the artificial tree she has brought and the spray snow for her living room. She says it will cheer her up seeing as now her son lives with her mum and dad. ‘Nice to have met you. I’m off to the dentist. Too many sweeties’, she grins. A waitress pulls down the shutter on the cafe. skinny young men stand drinking, ‘aye, weel , naw, see, if yous buy some, aye smoke it wi’ folk you ken.’ Twin boys in matching anoraks and bobble hats run, helter skelter, laughing, shouting, birling through the scheme. It is getting dark. A man hefts a Christmas tree over his shoulder and turning says….’see you efter, pal.’ I walk to where the road ends.

The Wood – 2018.

Monday, north east wind. The buzzard ushers me into the wood, sharp crack of twigs underfoot. I decide to cross the burn but halfway across realise it is too deep so turn back and clamber my way up the bank where I am met by a man and his dog. This is my first encounter with someone in the wood. He asks if I am ok and I feel embarrassed by my clumsiness. I introduce myself as an artist as if that might explain things and he asks if I am famous to which I laugh and apologise and say no. He tells me about Japanes artists he was watching work and dragons and his new home he is building. He has a gient sequoia on his plot where his garage will be. It has to go, it shouldn’t be there anyway. I paint the fragile day, it starts to rain, the drops settle on the paper. I stop, not wanting the rain to obliterate my marks, carefullt roll up the paper and quietly take my leave.

The wood has awoken. Gone the bare earth and bones of trees. Wild garlic, bluebells. An endless breath of green shimmers, flares, spins, laughs. This youthful fragility squeezes the heart to bursting. The sky has topsy- turvied to meet the woodland floor with patches of bluebells and forget-me-nots, enough to make a pair of sailors breeks. Constellations of white stars sweep benath the trees to the edges of the burn, their light marking the way.

The Farm – 2019.

Starlings on a telegraph wire, the fish van hurtles past, Shirley delivering her herring and mackerel door to door. Cider and ploughing matches, crows rise form the trees, bickering. The cattle are coming into the byre tomorrow for winter, the tups are going to the ewes. Ian pares their hooves with a stanley knife, shapes them, sprays them and tells them their day at the spa is over. Hawthorns tremble with scarlet berries, the leaves are all but fallen and the smell of cold sleepwalks the hill.. A milky sky folds and flows, bell clang of metal gate in latch. It rings across the field.

Autumn –

You picked a fine one.

Take some apples if you want.

At the edge of the pond a birds nest sways in the crook of a branch, it leans right out over the water. I used to live by the sea lying awake at night listening to the waves roar. Fearful. In dreams the house would float far out to sea.

Wind skites the surface, a row boat slowly spins and there at its bow a cormorant,

gothic, mythic, glorious.

It stretches its wings as wide as the pond,

incanting spells – whin, haw, haglet, craw. Blackie, phasie, cushie – doo.

The burns all around here used to be full of fish. Mind after work going out with my rod. Not now, they’re all gone.

The sky darkens and squally rain blashes the grassy banks making it slippy in wellies.

A kestrel hovers for a moment and wheels away to the north.

Off for a day of health and safety.

My knees are buggered now see. Stuff I used to do when I was young. My ain fault. A rope around my neck, pulling out an engine. Ha, daft eh.

I take a bite of an apple, and pull a face watching the music box bird take flight, singing its song for winter.

Spring –

Its knobbled bones poke through, worn down by wheel, foot, hoof.

Under the carpet, all but forgotten, the road to the kirk went this way once,

see, along here,

carrying coffins, prayers, sins, song.

Age old rhythms, far away now, faint, the edges of memory are brittled with age. Yet still the groove can cut the rug, crackling, spittling to life when the needle touches its skin.

One two three, one two three….

Dust rises and falls,

settles again.

Summer –

Ragged robin in the ditches, sparrows jostling, clyping in the hedgerows while a thin old black cat slinks in between the barley. Heat haze shimmers across the wheat fields already by mid-morning. Insects buzz in the shade of an ash tree. A small plane noisily fills the air, flying low over the Law. Cow parsley giddies as the postie’s van drives past strirring up dust in its wake.