Today, had things gone to plan, I would be celebrating my husband’s sixtieth birthday with him. When I say ‘plan’, I mean ours, not the eternal one. And it has, at times, been a bitter pill to swallow that this isn’t a mistake, or an aberration of some kind – this is precisely what was meant to be. Donnie was meant to die five months short of his fifty-second birthday, and I was meant to be a widow at thirty nine. I accepted this because, well, I accept the sovereignty of God. And, most of the time, I accepted his wisdom and his goodness. Yet, I am human and sometimes it was hard not to dwell ..read more

It’s a wonderful thing for a repressed, subjugated and delusional Hebridean woman like myself to know that the mainland has got my back. There are tourists who have visited ‘the isles’ (and renamed them), maybe twice, who can confirm that we’re talking nonsense about the ferries. Much like the chair of transport (I refuse to use ‘transportation’ until he’s in charge of actually sending folk to Botany Bay) at the Comhairle, our mainland protectors can confirm that Calmac are actually doing a brilliant job. So, presumably those Uibhistich marching in Glasgow were labouring under some mass shared ..read more

The coronation service for King Charles III was exactly like a typical Free Church service. Okay, there was a bit more cloth of gold, a few extra nods to pomp and circumstance, and an awful lot more women in evidence, but otherwise it was just like being in any Wee Free emporium throughout the land. The other way in which it was like the Free Church was the way in which sung praise ran like a golden thread through the entire proceeding. Yes, there was a choir, and what psalm 98 calls ‘jubilant song with music . . . music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with t ..read more

It took the Isle of Lewis a hundred years before it was able to publicly acknowledge the loss of HMY ‘Iolaire’ on the first day of 1919. Things that are true of us individually also tend to be true of communities, so I think I understand a little about the stopper we sometimes place to hold at bay such grief as cannot be borne all at once. Now that the bottle has been opened, though, we will not stop remembering. The ‘Iolaire’ has been written about, broadcast about and memorialised in a myriad of – as far as I can tell – uniformly tasteful ways. Those doing these things are, after all, a part ..read more

There’s a Scottish  gritter that has been christened ‘Wee Freeze’. Well, I say ‘christened’ but surely everyone knows the Wee Frees don’t go in for that sort of carry-on. We’ve never been much for laughing either. After all, mirth may lead to dancing, and dancing to goodness knows what else. (The reason we don’t know what else is largely because Wee Frees have no imagination, Calvin not having been very keen on them either). This has obviously led to hilarity about the gritter not going out on Sundays. Of course, if the comedians really knew their Wee Frees, they’d actually be expect ..read more

If I live long enough to become an old woman, I hope to do so independently. That’s how I live now, and though it wasn’t entirely a matter of choice, I can’t deny that it has its blessings. My home belongs to me and I arrange it the way I want. When I close that door, no matter what horrors lurk outside, nothing much can bother me here. It’s a house full of memories. I enjoyed almost twelve happy years of marriage here. Indeed, I was proposed to in this house.  But, if I reach a stage of infirmity where strangers have to care for me, my house will eventually be sold to foot the bill. This ..read more

A lot has been written about the way in which our Queen exemplified faith in Jesus Christ. I need hardly add my tuppence-worth to the many, many column inches on that subject. She was the very embodiment of how faith can change a life and make arduous service into a privilege through willing service to the right Master. What we have not had time to appreciate, however, is the extent to which her death has been an opportunity for extraordinary witness. How often did we hear faith mentioned, and God – there in the national press, on television channels across the world, on Radio 4 and Radio nan ..read more

Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Remember’ has a particular resonance for me. It asks that she be remembered after her death, when ‘you can no more hold me by the hand, nor I half turn to go, yet turning, stay’. These lines came back to me when my husband was dying, because they reminded me of a particular weekend when he had to leave home on Sunday instead of Monday, in order to attend some work training. We had been having such a lovely weekend, and both of us were sad that it needed to end that much sooner. I was trying to put a brave face on it, when he suddenly took off his jacket, chucked his ..read more

Going to church can have unintended consequences – unintended by yourself, that is, of course. I went this morning, thinking that after a week on antibiotics for the mother of all dental abscesses, I knew the meaning of long-suffering. Indeed, perhaps I could even be perceived as the living embodiment of it myself. Three sleepless nights, endless pain which didn’t respond to any amount of ibuprofen, salty mouthwashes or stern talkings-to, and yet I had retained my sanity and even some humour. Perhaps, I allowed myself to think, I am a paragon of putting up with adversity. You know, though, whe ..read more

There is an amusing scene in the Scottish film, ‘The Bridal Path’, when the naive protagonist goes to withdraw some money from his bank account, and is asked ‘what denomination’? He replies – of course – ‘Church of Scotland’. In my own part of Scotland, denomination has been all too important, time out of mind. I wonder how many of us feel that we belong to the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church, or the Free Presbyterian Church before we belong to the church of Christ. And I equally wonder how Christ, the head of the one church there is, feels about denomination.  How have we come, in ..read more