be family to your friends

Our Easter Feast – friends of seven nationalities who have become family… I’ve lived outside of my home country for the last seven and a half years. And before that there was also a gap year overseas and a study abroad year. So I’m getting used to being away from everything British. (Also the fact…

All the Saints

I was scheduled to preach the sermon at our church on 2nd November – All Souls Day. I was pretty excited about it. It was coming together well, words jumping out of the pages as I dug through my Bible to excavate the message I was hearing snatches of. The passage to be read that…

Scottish Lunch

What do you do when you’re seven and a half months pregnant? Host a lunch for six of your favourite girlfriends and cook four courses… Hmm. I might not recommend it as normal practise but it was a lot of fun, even if I could have slept for three days afterwards! I have this wonderful…

de(tales): Nan’s scales

  When she started hiding cash around the house in empty food tins, and forgot to throw out food that was past its sell by date, the family realised it was time. Still entirely unaware of her own limitations, my Nan nonetheless needed 24/7 care, and the hard decision was made to find an elderly…

On ten years

Ten years ago I arrived in a coastal Scottish town, a cobbled-street windswept place at the end of the road. It’s full of small cottages with low doors and soaring ancient ruins – all in the same deep grey rock. The wind sweeps across the sea from Norway and the golf-pilgrims arrive from America and…