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Plantastic
For anyone with an interest in plants, art or indeed both, below is a link to the degree show at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. They offer training in botanical drawing, a uniquely special method of documenting the life story of a plant. I have long been in awe of this, and its practitioners.…
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Lost and Found
For some years now some of our family have been discussing the mystery of The Sicilian, a female ancestor about whom very little was known. Thanks to some new research, she has been identified as Elizabetta Calabro. She and her spouse, Andrew Walker, had a daughter named Mary, in 1815. Mary was born in Gosport,…
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Mine of information
Loch Ore on Sunday, this superb local amenity features a circular walk through a variety of ecosystems, including a beach, reed beds, meadow, fields of geese and woodlands. Built on the land reclaimed from coal mining, it’s used for water sports and is the meeting place for the Newfoundland dog group. Wee frog here the…
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July kit
From my walk today, some wild, some planted. The poppies are at the end of the Dunfermline Road out of Limekins, an infamous junction where there is no place to linger. Today I was listening to my current podcast of choice, The Moth, thank you Fiona for the shout, walking along, when I became aware…
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Toothsome
I think most of us are experiencing sleep issues during lockdown. For me, it’s a mix of wakefulness, wild dreams, dozing instead of non REM, sensitivity to the early dawn, and so on. One aspect is that I wake up, frequently, singing. Many tunes wash through my cerebral cortex, I would love to say that…
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Notes from my perch
Occasionally my wanderings on the internet surprise even me. Today I found out that James Dick, a successful business man who was born in Kilmarnock and moved to Glasgow, developed the school gym shoe known by various names over the UK. He and his brother had experimented with using Gutta-percha to cover the soles of…
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Disembarkadero
My liking for train travel is well documented, I have been reminded of this during lockdown by two separate emails, both from subscriber lists. The National Railway Museum in York is a fascinating destination for normal times, I have mentioned before the thrill of sharing the same space as these leviathans of steam power. I…