Something in the Air

Image: Clive Woolls

Sunday Breakfast
My daughter and I braved the gorgeous sunshine of an Edinburgh morning to go out for breakfast yesterday. It was a lovely day and put one in a mind of Spring, but we will not be fooled. This is Scotland and it is just as likely to snow next week as it is rain or continue to shine brightly.

We made our way to Costa on Castle Street and found a nice wee booth to have our morning muffins, cappuccino and hot chocolate.

Shopping
We did a bit of shopping, too. She’s nearing the end of Jacqueline Wilson’s books and is ploughing her way once again through Louise Rennison’s, but she wants to try more authors of a similar vein. The only problem is I don’t know much about the female teen genre so the best I could come up with was Teenage Vampire. She’s going to look into it before spending her vouchers.

I, on the other hand, came away with The Poems of Norman MacCaig, over 500 pages of brilliant poetry from one of Scotland’s best loved poets. It’s the kind of book that you can open at any page and be treated to verse that’s as beautiful as it is compelling.

The Confident Freelancer
Back home and after lunch I logged periodically onto the Confident Freelancer Webinar to catch up with any overnight activity. After the closeness of the conversations and the high granularity of the subject matters being discussed, I felt sad that it was all over. The warmth and respect among the writers that took part reminded me of a forum I used to be a member of many years ago that is now defunct. All the writers from there have moved on in one way or another, but at the time it was a lively and rich place to share writing experiences.

Census
As well as the clock’s leaping forward in the early hours of Sunday morning, Scotland held its census last night. I completed ours online and it only took a few minutes. People say to me that I shouldn’t bother as it’s a form of Big Brother going too far, and the really paranoid among us say it will be used by the government against us.

I, on the other hand, would like to think that anyone in my family in generations to come will be able to find me, who I am, what I was doing and who I was related to if they ever decided to draw up a family tree. The census is probably the best way of leaving an accurate trail, which is my main reason for taking part.

This Week
There’s something in the air; I sense there are some exciting things on the horizon. I’m planning on getting BACCARA BURNING finished, if not very nearly there. GREENER IS THE GRASS needs a few small edits to get it ready to go out on the merry-go-round so I’ll make those and start pitching. I’ve got a couple of short story ideas and poem thoughts to pen. There’s a podcast planned and ready to record. My poetry books needs reformatted and uploaded to Kindle. I’m meeting a fellow Tweeter from Leith for a beer and to discuss a possible new project. And on Wednesday I’ll be through in Glasgow to see Big Audio Dynamite in concert at the ABC.

Bring it on!

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