A Scottish interlude

 A long gap since that last post - a busy time! We've recently come back after a couple of weeks in Scotland - walking in the Trossachs in the first week and doing a lot of research on the west coast during the second. Late spring is always such a lovely time to visit north of the border - although this time the midges were out in force rather earlier than I've known in the past! But the weather was great and the wild flowers just stunning. I was delighted to be able to get back to Inchcailloch, the uninhabited island in Loch Lomond  I last visited forty years ago and to which I've always wanted to return. There's a magic there I've experienced nowhere else - the sense of history, the quiet woodland, the clear waters, the view from the summit of mountain range after mountain range. A very special place.

But I have come back with something of a dilemma. The trip garnered more information about the subject of my biography than I could have hoped for - but also a lot of information around his life and times, about significant others with a bearing on the story who I hadn't encountered in any way beforehand. I'm still mulling over whether I should change the whole thrust of the book or think about a second publication following on from it. Pros and cons to either approach! But Covid has delayed progress on the project for long enough so I'm anxious to move forward on it now.

But this coming week sees the start of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, one of the poetry highlights of my year. A mixture this time of on-line and face to face events. I'm very much looking forward to the poetry walk on the Malvern Hills next Saturday (and hoping the BBC weather forecast is wrong!). If you haven't seen the programme, do look it up - there are some great events to get to one way or another.