Tag: Australia

Winter to Summer Solstice

Day 1

An inversion of fog has sunk below the mountains tops and settled on our tiny village. All around us the world has alerted into an underdeveloped sepia photograph with blurred edges and featureless faces.

The old mill, Killin

With such an abundance of thick fog, the village has felt cold and eerily dark. Its no surprise then that the the arrival of winter solstice yesterday was heartily welcomed.

An alter to welcome the return of the light

My wife and I did our first solstice ritual which, amongst other things, involved the lighting of candles and thinking of what the coming light means to us.

New life

The first warmth of the sun on my skin

The transformation of nature

Clean washing hung on the washing line

The sound of birds in the trees

New growth in the garden

Taken in Arbroath Scotland.

I am going to start recording my journey from winter to summer solstice, starting today, with the hopes of becoming more aware of the changing light. I feel this gives me an opportunity to take a moment at sunset to gather my thoughts, be still, and record what I see. A mindful moment.

Day 1 Sunset 15.41 UK

I was in B&M, so certainly not a mindful moment, but an awareness of the time lingered in the periphery of my mind. We came in for wool, because Helen wanted to start a new crochet project, and I needed dry stuffing mix for the Christmas dinner. Helen wheeled off in her wheelchair while I headed to the vegan section to see what bargains I could pick up. Five minutes later, and with a basket half filled with groceries that I didn’t need, Helen wheeled up behind me with a bewildered look on her face.

‘They’ve started selling Cherry Ripe, it’s my absolute favourite chocolate bar. I audibly gasped when I saw it. But it isn’t vegan.’

There was a look of disappointment on her face, but a glint of a memory pulled her lips into a soft smile and she was temporality transported to Australia, to a different time, to a time before us, before Scottish mountains, cold inversions and wheelchairs, to a time that shaped my wife into the woman she is today. I never saw her taste her first Cherry Ripe bar, but maybe one day, perhaps on a cold winters afternoon, when a cloud inversion has transformed the world into a blurred photograph, we will share our first vegan Cherry Ripe bar together. Until then, I will sit for a moment, after this post is sent out into the world, and listen to her tell me of that first taste, and learn something new on the first day of the coming light.

Telephone Box

Taken on Killin, Scotland

This is a working telephone box yet I’ve never seen anyone use it. We used to have one at the top of our scheme. It was red too, but a bit on the grubby side and with peeling paint. I remember the inside of it, the cigarette burns in the perspex windows, that kind of melted brown tear shape. I remember the ground was always wet and smelled of piss. I remember the air reeking of cigarettes and stale beer. We used to call the operator for a laugh. Pretend we were trying to get the number for Mr C Fax or Mrs C Saw. I rarely used it to make an actual phone call, but when I did, it was a hungry wee machine, eating up my silver and leaving me to say my goodbyes during the pip pip pip’s.

Do you have a telephone box in your town? What is it used for? Can you remember using them before telephones were in the house ?

This isn’t quite a prompt, but a request…

Imagine you you passing a telephone box and it begins to ring. You pick up the phone and I say. Hi, I’m Eilidh from Killin in Scotland. How would you greet me in your language?

I’ve had people visit me from 40 countries this year so far and don’t know who is from Scotland, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam and so on.

I’ve listed all of the countries that have visited my blog below.

Thanks as always for visiting.

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