Notes from the North

The parkland in front of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art – One on Belford Road is sculpted into what their website describes as a ‘stepped, serpentine mound reflected in pools of water’.  It was designed by the landscape architect Charles Jencks who is also known for his magnificent Garden of Cosmic Speculation at Portrack House in Dumfriesshire.  Garden of Cosmic Speculation  photos taken on a wet day in May 2015 The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is only open to the public for 5 hours one day each year when 1500 tickets go on sale to raise money for the Maggie Centres, a cancer care charity named after Maggie Keswick Jencks, Jencks’ wife. The park in front of the Edinburgh art gallery hardly bears comparison but is inspired by the same cosmic concepts that Jencks was able to express more fully in his own garden. The Belford Road site is also open all year round.    At present the gallery building itself is displaying Work no 975 by Martin Creed, a hopef...

I spent five days in Moniack Mhor in the last week of May, most of them in sunshine which one evening gave us a sunset such as one would more usually expect to see over on the western coast. The curlews were calling, the gorse a dazzling yellow and I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many hares, young and old, bounding about on the fields.   Moniack Mhor is Scotland’s best-known writing centre. Started thirty years ago by Kit and Sophia Fraser of Hootananny fame (pubs in Inverness and Brixton), the centre was partnered with Arvon ( www.arvon.org ) until 2014 when Creative Scotland, still one of Moniack Mhor’s core funders, stepped in with a grant and enabled them to go independent.     Besides being a haven for all sorts of writers and would-be writers – the list of those who have taught there includes some of the greatest Scottish poets and writers of the past half-century - Moniack Mhor works to live lightly on the land. To that end it grows quite a bit of its ...