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I am lucky to sometimes be in fascinating places, like here with my Cabinet colleagues the First Minister, Alex Salmond, and Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in the green room twenty minutes before the launch of the white paper on Independence
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The artist George Wylie would have been 90 this year. His anarchic, original, irreverent talent opened up the idea of art to so many. The paper boats project involved hundreds of children and they were ceremonially set adrift on the Clyde this summer in an extraordinary ceremony
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The small island of Lismore lies just off the village of Appin and is home to over a hundred people. The passenger ferry at the north of the island has a wonderful view north
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The graveyard at Clachan Duich in Kintail is a cold, but wonderfully sited, place. At the funeral of former Liberal Democrat MSP John Farquhar Munro, a man who was passionate about Gaelic Culture and the people he served in the Highlands I was in the first “lift” of the coffin, bearing the weight of a friend as we took him to his final resting place looking out to his home, and doing so alongside political opponents such as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the UK Government (and Highland MP) Danny Alexander. The community and democracy of life – and death – in Highland Scotland is still strong.
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I opened the museum at the Abbey on Pentecost Sunday 2013 – the 1450th anniversary of the landing of St Columba. These crosses have been raised for the first time in hundreds of years
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The ritual of a Burns supper can sometimes seem inflexible. But it can be subverted and improved in all sorts of ways as the comedian Hardeep Singh Kholi demonstrated in Glasgow in January 2012
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Some villages in Scotland celebrate two “new years” – the Gregorian and the Julian. According to Neil Munro, who wrote the famous “Para Handy” stories, Carindow was one such village
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The “glen of the two red spots”, probably called after the profusion of bracken in the autumn, though perhaps also because of the blood that flowed from a battle here over a thousand years ago. It was the place where Deirdrie said farewell to Scotland in the 13th century Irish epic poem, and it has been my home for 20 years
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Taken from the ferry from Jura. The torrential rain obscured almost everything as we docked
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I like experimenting with textures and effects. These are autumn leaves on a tree in my Argyll garden
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