Tag Archives: Nostalgia

Travels Part 2: Edinburgh

November 1, 2018 By in Family, Scotland, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sunset in Edinburgh Marchmont

It was time to leave Harris for the second part of our trip: a week in Edinburgh, followed by a few days in Helsinki, and then the long, long journey home.

We’d said our goodbyes, stuffed things back into our bags, and negotiated the notoriously tricky security line at Stornoway Airport. We were sitting on a tiny plane waiting to taxi to the runway.

Ten minutes later… we were still sitting there.

Twenty minutes later… we were still sitting there.

The pilot came on the radio and said he was going to turn the plane off and turn it back on again, in an attempt to fix whatever mechanical issue was causing the delay. Unfortunately, the old on-off-on again trick doesn’t work as well on Embraers as it does on iPhones, and a few minutes later we found ourselves traipsing down the aircraft steps and back into the airport. Continue reading →

A Happy Harris Holiday

July 8, 2013 By in Family, Scotland, Travel Tags: , , , , , , 19 Comments

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a four-year-old boy. Imagine that your favourite things to do are playing with your cars and trucks, spending time with your family, and running around outside to burn off all that energy that you have. Then imagine that you can go on holiday for a week and do all those things, every single day.

Lucky old DorkySon has just had one of the best weeks of his life up on Harris. It is always a pleasure to spend time back on the island that was my childhood home. It is one of those places where the pace of life is slower, where there are only imperceptible changes from year to year, and where I am always greeted like an old friend. It’s an even bigger pleasure for me now to watch DorkySon enjoy the same simple things that I did as a wee girl.

Isle of Harris beach Continue reading →

High School: The Best Days of Our Lives?

February 1, 2013 By in Nostalgia, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 47 Comments

 

Figure in jeans and grey shoes holding a backpack in front of a brick wall, with the text 'High school: the best days of our lives?'

“High school days are the best days of your lives…”

How often did you hear that nonsense line uttered when you were a teenager, eh?

Someone put a picture up on Facebook the other day of a staff photo from my former high school. According to the silver lettering embossed on the frame, it’s from 1999. I would have been sixteen at the time, and these were the teachers I saw every single day, week in, and week out.

I am shocked by how few of them I remember.

There are two or three I am still in touch with – friends of my parents, or parents of my friends – who I could comfortably stand in the street and make conversation with. There are probably another dozen or so who I either liked or disliked a lot, and their names are still easy enough to call up in my mind.

But then there’s the rest. A nameless mass of smiles and suits, made up of individuals who may or may not have once stood before me in a classroom and imparted their knowledge on noble gases, imperfect participles, and quadratic equations.

Continue reading →

Memories

July 12, 2012 By in Nostalgia Tags: , , , 11 Comments

read autumn leaf

The adorable Sarah did a great post over at Grenglish the other week about memories; asking people to consider which memories they’d keep if they had to pay for them.

It has provided a lovely opportunity to spend lots of time daydreaming, and revisiting some of the happiest times in my life. Of course, we’ve all had some horrible times in our lives too – memories that we’d quite like to take back to the shop for a refund – but there’s not much point in dwelling on those. The value of the good memories by far outweighs the value of the bad ones.
Continue reading →