It was Donald Smith, Director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre, who first put me squarely on the trail of Don Roberto with an invitation to speak about him at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival in 2016. Everything that has followed … Continue reading
Connecting journeys
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Last time I posted here was back in April 2020, on the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath. Since then Covid and other pre-occupations have intervened. But yesterday was New Year’s Day 2021 and the night before, at 11.00pm, we … Continue reading
Leaving Europe
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Here is a short video posted on 31 December 2020, imagining what Don Roberto might have thought about our impending departure from Europe.
Declaration
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All last week, working in my garden under clear blue skies, I watched the geese streaming north, high overhead, making for their summer grounds in Greenland. I wondered if they had registered any new strangeness in the place they were … Continue reading
English spectacles
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One of the many reasons I wanted to write about Don Roberto was to help me understand, and perhaps lend weight, to my own feelings about Scotland and Independence. Today, 31 January 2020, as Scotland is removed from the European … Continue reading
Robert and Nicola
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I was taken to task over my last post for not being sufficiently critical of the SNP. The reader pointed to specific policy shortcomings in investment and taxation, health and education—all of which, he added, are given a free pass … Continue reading
A simple choice
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Think about this for a moment: “The alternative is to accept that Scotland’s fate would remain in the hands of others and that the Scottish people would relinquish their right to decide their own destiny.” Not the words of Don … Continue reading
A prayer and a prize
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Almost every day lately we’ve been reminded one way or another of the contempt and disrespect in which Scotland and its representatives are held at Westminster. Thankfully this will cease for a while now as we enter general election purdah, … Continue reading
They shall not pass
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With General Franco’s remains freshly exhumed from the mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen, Spain’s public disavowal of his legacy must be ringing hollow in Catalan ears. The very thought of political prisoners in a European country in the … Continue reading
A Declaration for Independence
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The energy is rising, the momentum is growing. Less than a week after Scotland’s greatest-ever demonstration of support for independence, when more than 100,000 people marched in pouring rain through Edinburgh, from Holyrood to the Meadows, the following Declaration for … Continue reading
