‘At least one good thing has happened this year,’ said a friend, ‘I’ve got to know my neighbours better.’ It’s important, isn’t it? If neighbours greet us by name and stop for a friendly chat, it can cheer us up. What about our non-human neighbours? Can you name the trees you pass? The birds you … Continue reading Noticing nature: by naming
A healer with a unique understanding of the human mind told his worried followers to consider the ravens and the lilies of the field. Roll on 2,000 years and Phil Hammond, an NHS doctor, prescribes CLANGERS: eight habits for a healthy life. N is for noticing the beauty around us. ‘Try to be as still … Continue reading Noticing nature: sitting still
In primary school I dawdled on my walk home, gathering conkers or twirling sycamore seeds. I fed our garden birds and pestered sea anemones in rock pools. Attempts to find a wildlife career were thwarted until I met my husband, Rick, and together we wrote several books on early naturalists. Then, from 1997 until 2017, I … Continue reading Guest blogger for April
Mary Irvine, aged 76. Mary is one of Autumn Voices’ most regular contributors. Tell us 4 important facts about yourself: I drifted into a career in education rather than planning to. I became Head of Compensatory Education in Senior High and then moved to teach A-Level English and oversee S.E.N. in a Sixth Form College. … Continue reading Quick & Quirky Questions with Mary Irvine
Last week I said that when I’m ninety-nine I’d like to do something as impressive as Captain Tom Moore. That’s if I can live an active life until then.
Born in the Midlands, educated in Yorkshire, worked in Glasgow as a publisher and journalist, Simon has also lived in Sicily and Cyprus. Now spends most of his time in the Highlands wandering around knocking on doors as an interviewer.
There’s a new mood in the air, a call to action that’s different from BC – before Covid. Maybe it’s the enforced stillness allowing us to view in a new way those things that aren’t right. Or perhaps the individual sense of threat we’ve all experienced has stimulated a desire to act. In many spheres, … Continue reading (Be) Active – Older People’s Activism
hollow, ribbed tubes
natural engineering
of perfection
The room was buzzing. All day we’d been blowing up balloons, hanging bunting and strings of coloured lights, and erecting a wobbly screen for the slideshow of her nine decades. On every table, tea lights flickered in a sea of twinkling confetti 9s and 0s, and pots of daffodils stood ready to rejoice in my … Continue reading The Covid Party (or being active before we had to stop)
I read once that there seems to be something in their primal make-up that makes women long to be in a supportive and helpful group: somewhere they feel they belong outside their family group. The writer – whose name I can’t remember – thought that it may come from the need in early tribal groups to have childcare in case of illness or the death of the mother in childbirth.
The only place I have always wanted to go to was Italy. After I had finished my training as a nurse and had landed a job as a Staff Nurse at age forty-five, Robin said, ‘I think you deserve a holiday. You’ve never really had one, so what would you like best?’
Ingrid’s writing recently has been sporadic. She can write nothing for two years and then write two dozen poems in two months. She has no idea what turns the tap on and off. Her poetry has been published online by Ink Sweat and Tears and Open Mouse, in print in New Writing Scotland and been shortlisted for the Jane Martin Prize (pre age-restriction). In 2015 she collaborated with then Edinburgh Makar, Christine de Luca, on the poem ‘A Month on the Mile’. Ingrid won the 2020 Autumn Voices Poetry Competition with ‘Digitalis Purpurea’.
bridge to beyond’s unknowable yonder beguiles, beckons
Finola Scott’s poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals including Gutter, New Writing Scotland, The Fenland Reed, Lighthouse, RAUM and The Ofi Press. Her work has won and been placed in UK competitions. She is also a prize-winning performance poet and was the 2020 Federation of Writers (Scotland) Makar, as well as the 2020 Autumn Voices Poetry Competition judge.
No one in the UK is going to forget March 8th, 2021 in a hurry. Parents in all four countries will be celebrating children being back at school or shortly to return. It’s also International Women’s Day, and as women have borne the brunt of home-schooling, the phrase ‘women’s liberation’ will ring with particular jubilation for those mothers.
