http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/ Jamie Whittle's Blog en webmaster@sandstonepress.com Copyright 2009 2009-12-20T22:38:24+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/12/2009/moonwalking/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/12/2009/moonwalking/ About ten years ago or so, I remember a friend describing how she had spent the night of Christmas Eve hiking in the moonlight.  Although I had begun trips into the mountains after dark before, these had typically been under the short range guidance of a head torch.  Moonwalking, as I like to think of it, has a different dimension, when the world comes alive with a magic that’s hard to find in the daylight and in the summer months. It’s a pastime for between the autumnal and vernal equinoxes in Scotland.  The best conditions being a clear or partly… 2009-12-20T22:38:24+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/10/2009/live_music/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/10/2009/live_music/ There can be punch, balance and deftness in prose and poetry that make me marvel, paintings in whose colours I could willingly drown, angles and light in photography that electrify.  Yet of all the artistic media, it is music that penetrates my being like no other.  In music, it is the live concert that caps all experiences. The experience is deeply personal to each and every person, and in conversation friends’ faces light up when they narrate “the most amazing concert” they ever attended.  Ask someone to describe the best three concerts of their life, and you’ll see neuro linguistic… 2009-10-17T10:54:43+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/09/2009/zen_and_the_art_of_being_a_space_cadet/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/09/2009/zen_and_the_art_of_being_a_space_cadet/ You may have heard the one about the man who went to dip his headlights, and drove his car into a pond.  Well this morning was directly in point. As my thoughts unfurled the steps between rising at 5.45am to meeting a friend at the beach for a surf this morning, not actually making it to the beach was not one of the variables in my mind.  Leaving home in the rising light to the sound of the waves audible across the fields, breakfasted up and zoning in to a little Pink Floyd, the holy grail of the life/work balance… 2009-09-05T12:40:34+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/08/2009/el_rio_speyo/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/08/2009/el_rio_speyo/ Last Thursday I spent the whole day waist-deep in water.  In a strong current, amidst the arcs of sand martins, downblasts and squalls casting different patterns across the surface.  Rain at times heavy and unwelcome to nearby farmers hoping to harvest.  Then the weather later easing, a warmth rising from the rocks, an osprey hovering close by, wind in the many willows, the occasional torpedo of silver heading upriver. Between casts as the line would belly round, the mind wandered upstream from Fochabers to the hinterlands supplying the River Spey with water.  This immense and intricate network of ways, the… 2009-08-26T23:19:46+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/08/2009/beetroot_and_tanukis/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/08/2009/beetroot_and_tanukis/ It’s the biggest treat to come across a book whose pages you literally savour one after the other.  A delicious, fulfilling experience.  For me, it’s the tales of Tom Robbins which hit the spot every time.  I find myself torn between the urge to race through his books out of sheer delight, with a desire to hover in the page like a bee gathering sweet nectar. When a new book is released, it’s the Christmas sensation all over.  Joy and yeehaw.  A healthy immersion into a world of the craziest characters and wackiest wisdom.  I’ve just finished reading… 2009-08-02T19:42:31+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/07/2009/lossii_broth/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/07/2009/lossii_broth/ The swell washing in from the North the past few days has been hitting the Moray coast with fizz bombs.  Lossiemouth beach was positively effervescent yesterday with only about 5 seconds in between each breaking wave.  Looking from the hill overlooking the beach, you would have seen five to six lines of waves fill the 60 metre space between the high tide mark and the end of the breakwater wall.  A handful of brave fishermen stood along this wall casting out into the surf, periodically getting soaked by breakers obliterating against the stone.  From time to time, surfers would try… 2009-07-12T12:09:26+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/06/2009/flow_tripping/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/06/2009/flow_tripping/ Until I went to America in 1993, I’d never experienced road tripping.  Until then, a drive through the Drumochter Pass south to Edinburgh was an endeavour rather than a joy, the car stocked with sleeping bag, shovel and soup, anticipating a night caught in a snowdrift.  In Scotland, it seemed, people didn’t drive extensive distances for fun.  In America, as I discovered, the road culture is different. My first road trip was from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Charleston, South Carolina.  The distance of some 220 miles or so in one direction didn’t make it a test of steely endurance,… 2009-06-28T12:46:05+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/06/2009/jedi_brainstorming/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/jamiewhittle/06/2009/jedi_brainstorming/ I once watched an interview of George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, where he described the role of Jedi Knights.  “The Jedi” he explained, “are principally negotiators”.  Perhaps then negotiation is mightier than the sword, or indeed the light sabre!  I spent the past day and a half in the presence of a master negotiator, William Ury, author of such seminal books on the subject of negotiation as “Getting to Yes” and “The Third Side”, and a man who has negotiated between Mandela and de Klerk, with Hugo Chavez, in the Middle East and beyond.  He was in Scotland… 2009-06-20T10:58:04+00:00