the light

it's changing

I wake with daylight coming through the gap in the curtains and ask what time it is, fearing the answer. I’m given three guesses. Thankfully none of them is right and it’s just the start of the first clear-skied day in a long time.

Reportedly, parts of Scotland haven’t seen any sun at all in almost a month which feels appropriate in these times and accurate enough for Glasgow, even though the news is about different towns and cities. We have had sun in Glasgow. Not much of it, but some.

Later, I go for a walk. This is usually how I settle on the right words when it’s really important they are exactly the right ones, but walking’s not helping. I’m wrung out from an intense week and maybe that’s one reason I abandon more voice notes than I can count and eventually give up.

There are people gathered at the flagpole when I get there. It’s one of the city’s highest points with open views north towards the Campsie Fells, Dumgoyne and Ben Lomond. It’s not unusual for people to punctuate their walk by stopping at the flagpole and I do just that, often multiple times in a day. Today’s visitors resemble a congregation. They stand alone or in pairs or in clutches and all of them face the same direction. I join them and try to summon the memory of the last time I saw the sun so bright in a clear sky, which was maybe on the beach on Christmas Eve. The sun then felt significant for very different reasons and I wonder whether what I’m brooding over now would feel easier if the sun really was a god, the flagpole an altar and me a believer.

Sometimes, like on the final day of a writing residency for instance, there’s no arguing with the fact you’ve arrived at an ending. At other times, it’s only later that you can look back and see that, yes, that was it.

On the final day of a writing residency, each writer shares some work in progress. Since Monday, things have shifted quite unexpectedly and I have a meeting with my mentor to discuss something I typed in a haze the night before. In our meeting, we swear more with one another than we normally do, cut lines on the spot, bounce in our chairs and thrust our open palms at our screens like we’re high-fiving. I feel we’re closer than we ever have been to something important despite the ocean and what feels like, suddenly, the whole meteorological season that separates us.

I leave my office a couple of hours later having read the new work aloud and listened to others read theirs. We’ve had nice things said about our work and have said nice things to our colleagues, including goodbye. The next time we all get together will be for the last week of our two-year course and it turns out that being near an ending is possibly just as hard as being in one. If I’m not crying already then I definitely am when I see the last of the day’s sun warming the hall wall and hear the girls outside electing to play in the garden for the first time this year.

The next morning, which is Valentine’s Day, I wake alone and open Instagram. I watch a reel in which an elderly farmer from the north east is standing beside a tractor in one of his fields. His arms are spread, his palms are open and his closed-eyed, upturned face is lit by the sun just like the faces of the flagpole people were.

“What are you doing, Dad?” the woman filming her father asks, knowing fine well.

“Getting my vitamin D.”

I look at his weathered face and think that both winter and life can feel long and hard but it’s still possible to experience a moment of sudden pleasure that is no less profound for its simplicity.

I go out walking again with circles, cycles and the strange synchronicities of our lives on my mind. They’re the sort that no one would believe if you wrote them down even if you swore they really happened. I only become aware that I’ve been smiling when a long-haired man with a tiny infant strapped to his chest meets my gaze. He offers up a genuine, open smile and says good morning as I pass by.

Event news

Join me, Ali Millar , William Letford and Dawn Wood to celebrate the launch of issue 33 of Gutter Magazine , Scotland’s leading literary publication, this Tuesday 17th Feb at 7pm UK time in person at Portobello Books in Edinburgh, or online. All ticket details here.