Falling Leaves haiku

all the things
I meant to do -
falling leaves 

 

originally published in Issue 3:4 of Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society. 

Water of Leith - Roseburn to Stockbridge

 We enjoyed walking this stretch of Edinburgh's Water of Leith yesterday. There are several sculptures by Anthony Gormley in the river, the one below is near to the stairs that lead up to the Gallery of Modern Art. 

 

We were delighted to get good views of two Dippers, this one was in a very busy section of the river, quite close to Dean Village, which yesterday was more crowded with tourists and others than I've ever seen it. The Dipper didn't seem to mind the crowds

We also had a decent view of a Kingfisher, but it didn't stop for long enough for us to get a photo! 
 

For Nature Notes.  

 

China + 100 edited by Xueting C Ni

China + 100 is part of the Futures Past series from Comma Press. This series of science fiction anthologies set their stories exactly a century after a specific event in a country’s recent past, in this case stories from a China 100 years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This concept really appeals to me, so I was delighted to be asked to review this book. I was interested to find out from the book's introduction that China has a strong tradition of science fiction, stretching back over 100 years, a brand of science fiction that uses lessons from history and mythology to inform possible futures. Editor, Xueting C. Ni, writes about how difficult it was to overcome some writers' political and cultural misgivings about writing about the pandemic, which makes it amazing that this anthology exists at all. 

These stories vividly imagine futures that include a wide range of novel elements including: thermal imaging to reveal the past movements of people; quantum consciousness; eternal youth; smart clothing; payment in shops using traces of DNA; the expansion of human settlements across the universe;  and the recurring tropes of nutrition using food capsules or similar replacing real food; people having AI chips implanted in their brains; and of course lots of helper robots. 

All the stories refer back to the COVID-19 pandemic in some way and several of them include future pathogens.  Zhao Haihong's The Moon Returns (translated by Andrew Rule) sees a resident of the moon struggle to cope with the pathogens when he travels to take up a job on earth. In Ling Chen's Miracle Grass (translated by Xueting C. Ni), a pandemic has broken out among the residents of a space craft exploring the distant Kuiper Belt, while Anna Wu's Archaic Dust (translated by Christopher MacDonald) features a coronavirus that can be passed from computers to humans, which can be made visible using the Archaic Dust of the title. Cryogenic freezing means that characters in this story meet again well into the future. Meanwhile, the characters in Zhou Dedong's I Want a Different World (translated by Jack Hargreaves) actually time travel in this entertaining missing person case. It's a twisting, turning mystery and ultimately a beautifully tragic love story. 

Many of these imagined futures are, unsurprisingly, depressing to contemplate. Tang Fei's This is a Good Path (translated by Judith Huang) explores the downsides of immortality. A film-maker and his acquaintance find out that they're too selfish to take on looking after a house plant in this future where no-one wants to care for anything other than themselves. The main character in Yimei Tangguo's Dust Rose (translated by Mel ‘Etvolare’ Lee) is threatened with eviction for not being a productive member of society. I found it heartening though, that, in this horribly believable dystopian future overseen by AI police officers and state control of everyone's personal finances, the main character is an author, giving us hope that perhaps the arts will survive the AI takeover. Qiufan Chen's Glaze (translated by Xueting C. Ni) is a compulsively readable but highly disturbing story, which I'm tempted to describe as body horror (though I'm not really familiar with that genre). A stage performer who remodels part of her body during shows, is haunted by nightmares of being taken over by a monster and eventually finds that the nanobot system that she relied on to repair her body after every show is no longer working and her body starts to disintegrate. 

He Xi & He Zun's  The Wasteland Courier (translated by Gigi Chang) didn't really work for me, with it's overwrought descriptions. When I started reading Dan Shi's Fire (translated by Yahia Zhengtang Ma) I thought this was going to be another story that wouldn't work for me. However, I ended up loving its thought provoking approach to exploring history, censorship, gender identity and equality. I also was fascinated by the idea of  historical hubs attached to historical buildings and locations so you can explore the history of the site through a virtual reality set up. 

Lu Hang's The Concrete Farm (translated by Xueting C. Ni) follows a young woman, who teams up with a former student of her late horticulturalist grandfather to convert a failing housing development into a horticultural hub. This is a fine example of a thrutopian tale, a genre we need more of. There are problems all the way along to hold the reader's attention (alien fungi!), but it's a story with a satisfying, optimistic ending that gives us hope for the future.  

Overall this is a fascinating look into possible futures for China 100 years beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 China + 100 edited by Xueting C Ni, to be published 8 October 2026 by Comma Press. 

Disclaimer: I was sent a free pdf of this book in return for an honest review. 

 

 

Arthur's Seat

Yesterday morning was mild and sunny, perfect autumn weather for a walk round Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat, one of our favourite places for a weekend stroll. 

We caught sight of a Kestrel being mobbed by two Carrion Crows, click on the photo below for a closer look

We got a much closer look at one of the Carrion Crows  

Everything looked particularly sharply focussed in the bright light

Later in the day it started raining and in fact is still raining as I type. We need the rain, but it was certainly lovely to be able to enjoy the sunshine yesterday morning. 

Shared for Nature Notes. 
 

 

Dumfries and Annandale

 Before we came home from Dumfries and Galloway, we spent some time wandering around the town and along the River Nith. 

 We found this thriving patch, belonging to Incredible Edible Dumfries, a local community food group. 

When we travelled back home, we stopped at Annandale. I wouldn't usually write about a motorway service station, but this one has a lovely small loch with a lovely walk round it, making it an ideal place to stretch your legs in the middle of a long journey. It also has a number of white geese that hang around, though are generally reluctant to have their photos taken. 
 

We generally travel everywhere by public transport. However, we usually hire a car when we go on holiday. Sometimes we travel to our destination by public transport and hire a car when we get there, other times we hire a car in Edinburgh. We don't find we need a car at all if we visit the Isle of Arran; Perth or Peebles as in these places there are enough very local walks and enough decent buses to get us to locations for walks further afield. 

You can catch up on all my posts about this year's trip to Dumfries and Galloway by following the links below: 

A Few Days Away in Dumfries and Galloway. 

Nature Walks around Lockerbie. 

Murray's Monument; Talnotry Woodland and Waterfalls (plus bonus Red Deer). 

Caerlaverock. 

 

Caerlaverock

 

It's rare that we stay in Dumfries and don't visit the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust reserve at Caerlaverock. It's a wonderful place with a great range of habitats supporting loads of wildlife. It's famous for both wintering wildfowl and dragonflies. 

It has a lovely wildlife garden that's full of butterflies, in the photo below you can see a Painted Lady (at the top) and a Red Admiral with a Small White in the background

We were delighted to also see a Humming Bird Hawkmoth, though it didn't want to be photographed.

As we came out of the wildlife garden, we found a young hare, hiding in the grass

The birds we saw included Shovelers, recognisable by their weird shaped bills, the males weren't in breeding plumage, so not as easy to recognise from a distance as they otherwise would be. 

The aptly named Teal Pond was full of Teal

There were lots of Mallards  

and a few Mute Swans

 As well as the butterflies mentioned above, the insects we saw included Silver Y moth 

 

Common Hawker Dragonfly 

Common Darter Dragonfly (male in the photo below)

 

 

Long Hoverfly (Sphaerophoria sp)

 

Platycheirus sp hoverfly (the one in the photo below seems oddly interested in the Small White butterfly!) 

and a Noon Fly  

Grazing some of the fields were a number of Balwen sheep, a very distinctive breed of Welsh Mountain sheep 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Murray's Monument and Talnotry Woodland and Waterfall

Our second long day out while we were staying in Dumfries took us to the woodland walk at Talnotry, which features waterfalls and a monument to classical scholar and linguist Alexander Murray. First though, we found ourselves at the Forest and Land Scotland Deer Range, where a small herd of Red Deer are kept and looked after. We met Hugh, the oldest stag in the herd

 and watched a hind and her fawn 

Then starting from a car park a bit further down the road, we walked the steep and often marshy route through the woodlands to enjoy the waterfalls and monument. Here are just some of the landscape views 

There were lots of fungi in the woods, most of which we weren't able to identify