2023
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Hotel Life
Hotels are strange places. Particular the big chains that always give me pause when I am woken from my slumber by an early alarm, those initial few seconds it takes to remember where I am in the world when confronted by yet another bland room with the exact same layout as the other bland rooms…
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Everything changes
We human beings are a strange and complicated lot in many ways, none more so than when something alters in our worldview. I know that change is viewed by a lot of people as a bad thing yet it seems that, when it is thrust upon us, we adapt to it far more easily than…
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Que será será
I start a new job this week – on a Wednesday for some reason – my first new job for several years. It wasn’t planned but as my first day approaches I’m getting more and more eager to get going. Throughout my career working life I’ve only ever really wanted to do something useful, I’ve…
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Moving Home
Coming home I feel like I,Designed these buildings I walk by Guy Garvey (Elbow) – Station Approach When I finally left Dumbarton, the town I grew up in, a place that holds more memories for me than any other, I never looked back. I’d long since felt like I’d outgrown the increasingly claustrophobic small town…
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The Disappearing Dad
And here we are, half past three in the morning. I’m the only one awake, in my lap my son is gently snoring, my wife is asleep in our bed, the dogs are asleep on the sofa downstairs. The dark is punctured by a night light, the stillness outside broken occasionally by a car, it…
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Rabbie
For many years my Dad performed at Burns Suppers; singing, reciting poems, or delivering various parts of the usual speeches, including the ‘infamous’ Toast to the Lassies. Latterly he became involved with Dumbarton Burns Club holding various positions on the committee, and whenever Burns Night rolls around my thoughts immediately roll back to memories of…