Yesterday we had a lovely walk round Edinburgh's Saughton Park which lies alongside the Water of Leith. The bridge over the river at the entrance to the park is often a good place to see Otters, though we didn't see any yesterday! However, the little island in the middle of the river was looking very vibrant with a variety of plants in bloom, including the pink Hairy Willowherb which you can see in the photo below.
A few weeks ago I attended the launch of Angus MacMillan's memoir 'Between the Echoes' which was held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. It was a very enjoyable event and I bought a copy of the book, and even spoke haltingly in Scottish Gaelic to the author who kindly signed my book, despite my lack of ability to speak the language (we did lapse into English very quickly).
I've just now finished reading the book, which is a beautifully written evocation of growing up in Lewis, one of the Hebridean islands where Scottish Gaelic is still spoken and the Gaelic culture still hangs on, though much less so than it did even in the author's childhood.
The book is divided into sections and looks in turn at memories associated primarily with water, earth, fire and air. The personal anecdotes are well chosen to highlight both the freedom that the author and his friends had in growing up in a rural island community and the strong sense of community where neighbours would regularly visit each other and doors were left unlocked. Also a sense of "feeling at home on the earth":
"being fastened to the world by it's colours and shapes, and the bodily feelings created by the natural world and its contours, in the form of grasses, rocks, mud, water, slopes and hollows. Inanimate things are imbued with life, or given an entirely different imagined existence: lumps of soft peat shaped into birds and planes, sticks transformed into swords; puddles become lagoons for sailing matchstick boats"
The book ends with a chapter entitled 'Of Place and Home' which outlines some of what has been lost. Many of the Gaelic speaking islanders have left for education or work, and have been replaced by non-Gaelic speaking incomers, which has diluted the central role of the Gaelic language itself. (Tellingly, perhaps, the author himself no longer lives on Lewis.) Culture has changed too, a Gaelic 'ceilidh' used to be an informal gathering of neighbours, where there might be storytelling and music, but now, the ceilidh is a paid for, ticketed event centred on traditional Scottish dancing.
Between the Echoes by Angus MacMillan, published (2026) by Islands Book Trust.
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My latest Substack is all about butterflies and birds along the John Muir Walkway, with more detail than in my recent post here. You can read the Substack here.
We had a lovely day at Musselburgh yesterday. It's always a great place to see birds and at this time of year, a great place to see butterflies. So we went along, hoping to get some good counts for the Big Butterfly Count, which started on Friday. The Big Butterfly Count asks you to spend 15 minutes in one place noting the butterflies and day flying moths you see (the project only focuses on a selected range of species). We spent 15 minutes in each of three different places and saw a total of 65 butterflies and three Six Spot Burnet Moths. Here are some photos:
We saw a lot of Meadow Browns, the photo below shows a female (unusually, in this species, the female is brighter than the male)
a couple of Common Blues
We saw a good selection of birds, including around fifty Curlew, which was particularly pleasing as these birds are becoming very rare.
We also had a wonderful view of a Stoat, though we didn't get a photo of it, as it dashed away so quickly.
Shared for Nature Notes.
I survey butterflies throughout the summer at two sites (Lauriston Farm and Corstorphine Hill, both in Edinburgh), but am always happy to go to other places to count butterflies for the Big Butterfly Count.
The photo shows a Comma Butterfly, one of the species I hope to see during the Big Butterfly Count.
Having seen the film, I was very keen to read Magnason's book, which, by coincidence or not, was sitting on my bookshelves.
The book is a much more wide ranging thing than the film. While the film physically remains in Iceland, the book includes Magnason's travels and his meetings with the Dalai Lama. The book also goes into more detail about environmental issues than does the film, while taking in a wider range of subjects including spirituality, that are only touched on in the film. The film is well worth seeing, and if you get the chance, do see it (it seems to have finished its current run in Edinburgh cinemas, but I'm sure it will come back at some point). Whether or not you've seen the film, the book is a must-read.
The review became longer than my standard book reviews on this blog, so I decided to post it on my Substack, and you can read it here.
On Time and Water, by Andri Snaer Magnason, translated by Lytton Smith, published (2020) by Serpent's Tail
Last year I had the unenviable task of clearing out a friend's flat after she died (you can read my post about house clearances over on my Substack here). In amongst all her stuff, were loads of unused postcards. I wondered what to do with these until I recently discovered Postcrossing. This website basically links people up to send postcards around the world. It's fun, it keeps alive the old fashioned habit of sending real mail and I also find it a good way of practising my languages (I've written and received a few postcards in German, a couple in French but none so far in Italian and don't expect to ever write any in Scottish Gaelic.) I've got lots of card making supplies and have taken out the card that's the right size, shape and thickness and made some postcards to send, with more on the way no doubt. I may use some of the postcards to send to people outwith Postcrossing. Here are a selection, all made from paper scraps and craft supplies purchased from second hand shops:
We had a lovely walk on Saturday, around Edinburgh's Corstorphine Hill. It was very misty, with a heavy haar (sea mist) hanging over the hill, which was very atmospheric.
There were also several Red Soldier Beetles in amongst the Ragwort - I haven't seen as many of these beetles as I would expect to see at this time of year.
