About my blog

These pieces appeared on my WordPress blog ‘A Remote View’ between May 2016 and February 2018.

As a writer I am particularly interested in place-sense and place-attachment, both of which are very strong in the Scottish Highlands, where ‘place’ is a complex combination of myth, history, landscape and language.

I hate the word remote as a label for rural places. It requires the speaker to take their orientation from some urban place: an outsider’s perspective. And it implies that the value of a place decreases with its distance from a centre of population. Rather, ‘remote’ here refers to a distance within myself. Writing is a lonely occupation.

This blog is a blend of place-writing and memoir.