2025 Year of Surprises and Nostalgia

 

2025 Year of Surprises and Nostalgia

The internet gives us unbounded access to “knowledge:”

but – at the same time leaves us ignorant and in our own bubbles.

 

That’s why knowledge and empathy through books – through all the Arts: poetry, music, art,, film, matters so greatly. Otherwise our worlds are limited. To celebrate our diversity and connectedness. 

 (The UK apparently is a rich country – when I wonder if this is true, where is the money?)

Ignorance is a terrible weakness. Different cultures and identities can sit side by side – why does one culture have to be better or superior? We are stronger for our diversity. 

 

In the new year 2026 - I hope for greater empathy and understandings through the Arts.

 

 NOSTALGIA

Its so easy to be nostalgic at Christmas, 

remembering all the past Christmases, 

looking up old photos and friendships, 

 

of the time ticking by,

the past years endings and all that it meant,

the memories, the highs and the lows. 

 

Making new plans, new resolutions, expectations

of what the new year may offer….

PK

Long Memory

I shake out the dusty distance between the lost long ago times.

There’s the National songbooks faded now a deep brown,

There‘s the thought of back when the world was bright and new. 

 

I thought back then

There was so much time,

I took for easy granted,

Never looking too far behind, 

Often too easily uncaring and reckless,

Forgetting time passes us all goodbye.

 

I remember singing those well loved Burns songs -

Ye banks and braes o bonny doon

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair,

How can ye chant ye little birds

And I sae weary full o care.

 

Ye’ll break my heart ye warbling birds, 

That wanton trough the thorny trees,

Ye mind me o departed joys,

Departed never to return. 

 

And iconic pop tunes,

Joni Mitchell, Elton John, the Beatles,

Of Mozart and Beethoven classics,

All accompanied me in my safe place.

PK

 

November 2025

2025 Reflections TOP PHOTOS

Some favourite memories of 2025! From fun concerts at Celtic Connections and excellent times at Edinburgh festivals. 

Edinburgh 2025

Past concert memories!

Blackberries ~ Margaret Atwood

Blackberries

~ Margaret Atwood

 

 

In the early morning an old woman

is picking blackberries in the shade.

It will be too hot later

but right now there's dew.

 

Some berries fall: those are for squirrels.

Some are unripe, reserved for bears.

Some go into the metal bowl.

Those are for you, so you may taste them

just for a moment.

That's good times: one little sweetness

after another, then quickly gone.

 

Once, this old woman

I'm conjuring up for you

would have been my grandmother.

Today it's me.

 

Years from now it might be you,

if you're quite lucky.

The hands reaching in

among the leaves and spines

were once my mother's.

I've passed them on.

 

Decades ahead, you'll study your own

temporary hands, and you'll remember.

Don't cry, this is what happens.

Look! The steel bowl

is almost full. Enough for all of us.

 

The blackberries gleam like glass,

like the glass ornaments

we hang on trees in December

to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.

 

Some berries occur in sun,

but they are smaller.

It's as I always told you:

the best ones grow in shadow.

 

The Statutes of Iona 1609

 

On a beautiful sunny day under perfect blue skies, we visited the peaceful island of Iona, where I discovered a plaque to the –

Statutes of Iona of 1609

James VI brought the clan chiefs together for a meeting on Iona. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and heir to queen Elizabeth of England – with the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

 

He required that the eldest sons of Highland chiefs be educated in England

 

The Statutes of Iona aimed to civilize the Highlands into English culture and language in order to suppress Gaelic culture, and to bring clan leaders under royal control by making them accountable in Edinburgh. 

 

To eliminate Scottish Memory by outlawing Gaelic bards. 

 Just as had happened in Ireland outlawing Irish Gaelic. 

Key Aspects of the Statutes of Iona (1609):

·       Education for Heirs: Chiefs had to send their firstborn sons (or other heirs) to be educated in Lowland Scotland.

·       Religious Compliance: Support Protestant ministers and outlaw Gaelic bards (who preserved traditional culture).

·       Royal Control: Chiefs had to appear annually before the Privy Council in Edinburgh to answer for their actions.

·       Goal: To pacify the Highlands, assert royal authority, and assimilate the region into the more "civilized" Lowland Scottish & English culture, reducing the power of the clan system. 

 

Women support Scottish Independence

I noticed in the photos of many far right marches that most protesters were male. Many men today feel angrily disenfranchised by the failed capitalist economic models and the rise of AI. 

There are movements such as ‘Women Against the far Right’ (a woman’s Claim of Right in Scotland 1991)

 

By contrast more women now support Scotland’s independence as they see the chaos, erosion of human rights and a toxic Westminster culture - and also the erosion of women’s rights under Trump’s America – Roe vs Wade. 

 

Plus the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party and his far right ideology, against equality and human rights.

A vote of Scotland’s indy is a vote against English nationalism, racism, and narrow ideology. 

People in general want more control over their lies – via improved local governance.

 

A vote for indy is a vote of more progressive policies, for equal rights, and gender just welfare state.

Scotland Maritime Navy and close ties to Denmark

 

Scotland Maritime Navy and close ties to Denmark

 

I attended school near Granton Edinburgh, when I remember we often walked down to the harbour to sketch the wide views over the Forth estuary to Fife. 

 

Across the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Scotland had close ties to Denmark. In the days before trains and cars, the only means of transport was by ship on horseback. 

The Stewart king James IV built his royal dockyard at Newhaven Edinburgh, where he decked his magnificent flagship the Great Michael – which was completed in 1512.

 

(Article When Scottish Maritime enterprise ruled the waves, National November 2025) 

 

James IV flagship the Great Michael

 

Craigmaddie Reservoir PHOTOS at Mugdock

 

Craigmaddie Reservoir PHOTOS at Mugdock, one of our best local places to walk. Often the reflected light here is very moving and beautiful. 

Scots actor Sam Heughan of Outlander

Scots actor Sam Heughan Is one of our world class stars. He came to fame in the major Scots TV series OUTLANDER – which will screen Season 8, in 2026, now on MGM+ 

The story centres around an English military nurse Claire, played by Cailtriona Baife who time travels back to a war torn Scotland of 1743. Two years before the Jacobite rising of 45. Where she falls in love with a highland warrior Jamie Fraser played by Sam Heughan

Its a mix of love story, time travel and historical drama. The second season travels to the Caribbean. Later series travel to France, and then to America. The series is based on the books by American and academic author Diana Gabaldon. There is now a Prequel series Blood of my Blood. 

**I took these photos at the Edinburgh international book festival 2025, at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

Language Colonisation of the mind

 

Language Colonization is cheaper and more effective 

In Ireland the Irish language was criminalized back in 1366 in the Statues of Kilkenny. 

(Edmund Spencer, author of Faerie Queen. Pamphlet 1596. A View of the Present state of Ireland.) He argued language was the best means of bringing about the erasure of Irish memory. 

 

“It hath been the use of the conqueror to despise the language of the conquered. The marginal status of Irish in its own land, did not come about by some kind of natural evolution.” 

The decline of Irish in its own land was brought about through conscious political acts and educational policies.”

 

“The colonisation of the Irish language would make the Irish forget who they were, weaken their resistance and therefore make it easier for the English to conquer and subdue them.” Writes Edmund Spencer 1596

 

“Language conquest unlike the military form, is cheaper and more effective: the conqueror has only to invest in conquering the minds of the elites, who will then spread submission to the rest of the population. The elite becomes part of the linguistic army of the conqueror. 

 

What’s culture got to do with politics, The National Alan Riach

 

The Unionist purpose is to delegitimise any claims Scotland has a national culture and identity of its own which justify and underpin its right to self determination.

Ii  “Globalised power escalates the scale of the action.” Ngugi continues 

 “The trauma initially wrought by the colonial education system is thus passed on, inherited. Abnormally becomes normalised. The colony of the mind prevents meaningful, nationally empowering innovations in education.”

..control by the coloniser of the colonised is inherent in the inequality of the education system. Education may become a process of mystifying the cognitive process and even knowledge. “

 

“Here we need to make a distinction between education and knowledge. Knowledge is a question continuously adding to what we already know in a dialectical play of mutual impact and illumination.”

 

“The normal cognitive process starts form the known and heads towards the unknown. The new known enriches the already known, and so on, in a continuous journey off making dialectically related connections.

Knowledge of the world begins where one is.”

 

‘Colonial education was never balanced or inclusive.”

 

*BOOK

Decolonising the Mind, Kenyan writer, Nguqi wa Thiong O

Insisted the erasing language is the most lasting weapon of oppression. 

 

 

Where the Seas meet the Skies

There’s something ethereal about the way the light reflections of soft blues shimmer where the seas meet the skies. It’s a place of escapist dreams, new hopes and horizons. The ever changing light. Depending on location. 

The light in Orkney is much softer than on mainland Scotland. 

Watching the light is everything with capturing photography. 

 The light in Orkney is much softer than on mainland Scotland. 

Watching the light is everything with capturing photography.