http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/ The Sandstone Blog en webmaster@sandstonepress.com Copyright 2010 2010-09-08T10:12:51+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_10/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_10/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-09-08T10:12:51+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_9/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_9/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-09-06T07:50:48+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_8/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_8/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-09-04T09:39:56+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_7/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_7/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-09-02T09:12:32+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_6/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_6/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-08-31T10:02:53+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_5/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_5/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-08-29T11:06:22+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_4/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_4/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-08-27T09:38:13+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_3/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_3/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-08-25T09:38:49+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_2/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_2/ This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an… 2010-08-23T08:09:58+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/liz_ashworths_programme_and_menus_for_the_orkney_science_festival_2010/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/liz_ashworths_programme_and_menus_for_the_orkney_science_festival_2010/ THURSDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER, 2010 OPENING BUFFET St Magnus Centre 12.00 midday – 1.30pm A selection of the quality food and drink of the Orkney islands including Highland Park Smoked Orkney salmon – Specially prepared and smoked Orkney Salmon marinated in 12 year old Highland Park whisky from Lossie Seafoods Orkney Herring exciting New Healthy Fish to Go – a surprise! Orkney Fishermens’ Society Orkney Crab from Stromness Orkney Claymore Cheddar Peat Smoked Orkney Claymore Cheddar Cheese Peat Smoked Orkney Garlic – a reminder of Orkney peat fires and a wonderful taste sensation 2010-08-22T19:36:39+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_1/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/sonnets_to_mozart_1/ Edwin Morgan’s death on Thursday cut across everything. The final weeks of preparation of James McGonigal’s biography, Beyond the Last Dragon, had been frought. In proofing the print PDF a high number of typos were discovered. At the same time the decision was made to change the font from traditional to modern. Amendments and corrections were also required in the photographic section. These discoveries and decisions made, our excellent typesetter, John Hewer, who has made a major contribution to the never ending professionalising of Sandstone Press, was taken into hospital with a ruptured appendix. After only a few days he… 2010-08-21T09:10:26+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/interview_with_bobbie_darbyshire_in_readerireadit/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/interview_with_bobbie_darbyshire_in_readerireadit/ This interview with Bobbie Darbyshire, author of the very successful Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones was carried out by Sarah McKenna and published on http://www.readerireadit.com. In it Bobbie Darbyshire is very revealing about her writing methods as well as obstacles to be overcome. She makes reference to her fine first novel, Truth Games. Sarah: Author of Truth Games and recently published Love Revenge & Buttered Scones, Bobbie Darbyshire talks to ReaderIReadIt about her books, some great tips for starting a novel and what she would ask her favourite author … about your book Bobbie: What was your… 2010-08-13T14:16:31+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/review_of_yin_yang_tattoo_from_korean_magazine_groove_korea/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/review_of_yin_yang_tattoo_from_korean_magazine_groove_korea/ This appreciative review by Adam Walsh appears as a three page spread with colour photographs by Tim Pelling in the current issue of Groove Korea magazine. Visit http://www.seoulstyle.com/groove.php RON McMILLAN, AUTHOR OF YIN YANG TATTOO In a Skype interview from his home in Thailand, Ron McMillan’s Scottish brogue sounds an awful lot like how you would imagine “Yin Yang Tattoo’s” main character Alec Brodie sounds. Commenting on his writing process and similarities people point out between the two, McMillan said, “I follow the ‘write what you know’ cliché. I know a hell of a lot about being a photographer… 2010-08-13T09:03:17+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/review_of_hamishs_mountain_walk_by_sarah_mckenna_of_readerireadit/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2010/review_of_hamishs_mountain_walk_by_sarah_mckenna_of_readerireadit/ This delightful review of our re-imagined edition of Hamish Brown’s classic Hamish’s Mountain Walk is by Sarah McKenna. For this and more please visit http://www.readerireadit.com HAMISH’S MOUNTAIN WALK After packing in his job, Hamish Brown, decided to devote the rest of his life to what he liked best; walking and climbing in the mountains. The resulting diary of his first ‘expedition’ became a book that over the years has become the Scottish hill-walkers ‘Bible’ and like the Bible includes a Ten Commandments of Mountaineering.. First published in 1978 Hamish’s Mountain Walk has recently been republished by Sandstone Press… 2010-08-13T08:59:42+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2010/hawthorn_blossom/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2010/hawthorn_blossom/ When Gareth Edwards finally ended his distinguished rugby career as, probably, the most athletic and skilful scrum half ever, it was Cliff Morgan whom journalists sought for comment. Cliff was just about old enough to be Gareth’s father although was probably more akin to a youngish uncle. Like Gareth he enjoyed a world reputation in the sport. He was also articulate, an innovator and maker-of-things-to-happen, journalist and author. Standing beside a rugby pitch on a cold spring day, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his overcoat, the question he had to field was as follows. ‘What will Gareth… 2010-07-22T13:45:13+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2010/woman_trouble/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2010/woman_trouble/ America’s Independence Day seems like a suitably ironical occasion to present this poem. First published by Sally Evans in Poetry Scotland in the year 2000 it has lain more or less inert since. Conceived as a bit of a joke it probably had a bit too much truth in it, and possibly still has. It also has a propaganda, let me say educative, purpose since its metre insists on the correct pronunciation of Glenmorangie, with the emphasis on the adjective ‘mor’. Woman Trouble From twelve o’clock till two my sleep was sound. I tossed and turned till eight then… 2010-07-04T11:12:52+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2010/all_things_that_go_out_are_also_prayers/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2010/all_things_that_go_out_are_also_prayers/ In 1998 Scottish Cultural Press published After the Watergaw, conceived and edited by the (now) Managing Director of Sandstone Press, Robert Davidson. A collection of new poems based on water, the contributors all donated their royalties to WaterAid. Contributors included Edwin Morgan, subject of the coming biography by James McGonigal, Beyond the Last Dragon. James was also a contributor. It amounted to a substantial sum. Here is Robert Davidson’s own contribution, a villanelle. A Prayer Journey For Water Child across her hip, gourd upon her head, she looks for small streams - does not know rivers. Bless the… 2010-06-11T07:07:37+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2010/nothing_is_final_anything_is_possible_2/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2010/nothing_is_final_anything_is_possible_2/ The domestic football season traditionally ends with the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden. On the morning before Ross County played Dundee United Sandstone had two authors signing their new books at Waterstones, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Moira Forsyth’s novel Tell Me Where You Are had just been released and Simon Varwell’s travel book, Up The Creek Without A Mullet, had been going for only a few months. Both authors went to the game afterwards since both live in Highland Scotland have a sense not only of being represented by Ross County, but also that the wider area which both they and… 2010-06-05T12:13:04+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2010/Nothing_is_final_anything_is_possible_1/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2010/Nothing_is_final_anything_is_possible_1/ For some reason Ben Lomond, one of the more benign Munros, defied me. For reasons of my own fitness, which has gone up and down more than most over the years, or that of my companion, or having to assist someone else, it took me five attempts. This is the same number as the much more formidable Ben Cruachan. Cruachan has several distant, challenging tops and I had to visit for a record sixth time to do the Taynuilt Peak in winter. Low visibility and a solo effort required pinpoint navigation that gave me real satisfaction and pride. The hills… 2010-05-27T12:29:55+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2010/a_beacon_of_hope_in_the_israeli_palestinian_conflict_by_ann_yule/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2010/a_beacon_of_hope_in_the_israeli_palestinian_conflict_by_ann_yule/ Sandstone Press is very pleased to welcome guest blogger Ann Yule, Convenor of the Neil Gunn Trust. Throughout its twenty six years of existance the Trust has been involved in many fine, successful projects, and many have led into further benefits. Here Ann Yule, Trust Convenor, outlines how the Neil Gunn Writing Competition has reached into the most intransigent of world conflicts and found a light to be raised high. If you can make it to Eden Court’s One Touch Theatre on 1st June, please do come along. *** ** A Beacon of Hope in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict The… 2010-05-19T12:49:23+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/fannibaws/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/fannibaws/ Since there has been some talk of literary rejection in these blogs of late I thought I would post this Ross County match report from a few years ago. The editor, a kind woman, felt her readership was not quite ready for it. I suspect she was sparing my feelings. The day that Ross County put their ticket allocation for the Scottish Cup Final up for sale seems an appropriate time Fannibaws! Wandering beside Dingwall canal, chance had me stumble across shooting practice for the Ross County forwards. The Assistant Manager had the goals up and netted and… 2010-04-26T15:59:23+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/birdson_in_the_morning/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/birdson_in_the_morning/ Waking to birdsong and going out into it early this morning I was reminded of this poem I wrote a few years ago. It appeared in ‘Pushing Out The Boat’, edited by Magi Gibson and published by East Aberdeenshire Council. Birdsong in the morning Birdsong in the morning. Behind closed curtains behind closed eyes why am I so unhappy? Easy.  My hip hurts and my back hurts. My mother has advanced Parkinson’s Disease. She has been moved into a Nursing Home. Naturally she hates the whole idea. My wife’s mother isn’t well either. 2010-04-14T15:22:16+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/Love_songs_for_mice/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2010/Love_songs_for_mice/ Asti MacPasti finally packed his little bundle and set out for Sleepy Hollow. Three days later he was met with cuddles from his human and a scolding from Mica who had taken the fireside chair for her own. Sandstone Towers was empty and echoing, but nature abhors a vacuum. When the cat moved out the mice moved in. The popular mythology of Tom and Jerry and Pixie and Dixie gets it wrong. As a rule the mice are the dim ones, although not so dim as humans who deny their presence until their numbers have increased exponentially. I looked at… 2010-04-03T10:42:56+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/reading_poetry_on_trains/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/reading_poetry_on_trains/ The Highland Festival used to have its offices among the topmost reaches of Inverness Castle. For those who have not visited Inverness the Castle is a reddish confection located on a hill above the River Ness, a fine postcard picture. A relic of the Old Queen and her Albert it has the royal residence at Balmoral as a cousin once or twice removed. Nowadays though, it hosts Inverness Sheriff Court where I once kicked my heels for a couple of days as a potential witness. Later acquaintance would have me puffing my way up the stairs to meet Festival Director… 2010-02-28T11:16:06+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/Malgre_tout/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/Malgre_tout/ The Letters of Vincent van Gogh left me more or less untouched until that to Theo dated 21st July 1882 from The Hague. Some things arrest you in your career through life and for me this reading was one. It came across as an anguished credo filled with truth and dignity. Neither he nor Theo had any reason to believe that his work would live on and be valued, either spiritually or financially. It was a bleak time. Beside his increasing commitment to art, the letters up to this one demonstrate most of all his mental instability and how it… 2010-02-19T09:32:30+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/bullet/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/02/2010/bullet/ The Imperial War Museum North in Greater Manchester is running a Don McCullin retrospective to mark his 75th birthday. You can read about it here http://bit.ly/crvwPY and admire some of his images as well as the man himself. This seems a good time to republish this poem from a few years ago. There is no sign of its relevance passing far less the importance of McCullin’s noble stance. Bullet Today I saw the picture of a child shot in the head by accident on the periphery of the economic system I live and… 2010-02-03T16:38:37+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/01/2010/crumbs_of_comfort/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/01/2010/crumbs_of_comfort/ Shand MacEwan, Scotland’s favourite old poet, looked up from his word processor and turned clumsily in his seat. A stroke had left him weak and barely mobile down the left side but something compelling had moved at the corner of his eye. He leaned back so he could see the Cromarty Firth more clearly through the bay window. A big greylag, flying on its own, was coming in. This was its in-between time, it had been strong and graceful in the sky but now had gone all clumsy. Its wings were spread out and turned forward, its grey legs were… 2010-01-30T13:12:42+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/12/2009/wateraid/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/12/2009/wateraid/ Away back in the early 80s a young engineer stood over an open manhole in the garden of a Council house located in a town not too far from where I write now. Okay, you’ve got me bang to rights. I was that young engineer, not long arrived from Glasgow and not really all that young since I was approaching the end of my rugby career. The rugby career was, surprisingly, having one of its best phases and there are one or two other surprises in that opening sentence. The manhole was already called a chamber opening within engineering, but… 2009-12-29T12:56:00+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/12/2009/valediction/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/12/2009/valediction/ The phone rings and your life changes. This time it was one of the District Nurses who visited my mother at her sheltered accommodation in Glasgow. ‘Robert,’ she said and, after some preliminaries, ‘She is not responding’. In return I made some spluttering noises that amounted to denial. The nurse cut through with, ‘She is at risk’. Bang! Reality. Between the District Nurses and me we got things moving and, in fact, in a few weeks Mum made enough of a recovery to be deemed able to return. Eight months later she died. The entry in my diary for Saturday… 2009-12-12T14:45:36+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/the_years_books_2007/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/the_years_books_2007/ A couple of years ago Roger Hutchinson of the West Highland Free Press asked me to write something on my favourite books of the year. At the time I was on fire after Sandstone’s publication of Shadow Behind The Sun by Remzije Sherifi and far exceeded my brief with this medium length essay. The fire has not so much died down as been joined by other fires. My concern for events and directions in European affairs is no less now and probably greater. The essay was circulated privately and I suspect that now is a reasonable time to put it… 2009-11-29T10:36:23+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/The_Boardman_Tasker_Award_for_Mountain_Literature_2009/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/The_Boardman_Tasker_Award_for_Mountain_Literature_2009/ Short listed author John Allen, of Cairngorm John: A life in mountain rescue, was present at the Award Ceremony in Kendal on Friday 20th November supported by his wife Ann, two Sandstone Press Directors and our North of England representative James Benson. The event was superbly organised by the committed and generous Boardman Tasker Committee. The families of both the late, great climbers and authors Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker were not only present on the day but extremely active. The afternoon event was, to coin the well worn cliché, a game of two halves. Both were superbly organised and… 2009-11-22T11:32:54+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/tweedsmuir/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/tweedsmuir/ Tweedsmuir was the title John Buchan took when he was elevated, as it is put, to the House of Lords. The Tweed is a river that runs through border country, but there are many kinds of borders. The last sixteen years, at least, of my mother’s life were blighted by Parkinson’s Disease. Probably it was more because the diagnosis took some time. Indeed, I understand that an element of chance was involved, and the instincts of an enthusiastic young doctor who decided to investigate along an unlikely line. Her deteriorating condition took her out of the flat she had lived… 2009-11-15T15:25:02+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/remembering_kosova/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/remembering_kosova/ This guest blog comes from the author of our forthcoming non-fiction, Up the Creek without a Mullet, Simon Varwell and was taken, with his permission, from his own web site (soon to be redesigned) http://www.simonvarwell.co.uk. Soon Simon will have his own blogspot on this web site to engage with his readership, to talk about his first book, his continuing travels and much else.  This piece refers to another Sandstone Press book and is titled:- Remembering Kosova I’ve just finished reading Shadow Behind the Sun, a book I blogged about a wee while ago.  By Remzija Sherifi, a Kosovan Albanian,… 2009-11-10T20:37:35+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/SANDSTONE_PRESS_Publishing_from_Highland_Scotland/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/11/2009/SANDSTONE_PRESS_Publishing_from_Highland_Scotland/ A new book festival, Reading and Writing in Ross-shire, had its first running on Saturday 7th November 2009. Entitled ‘Homecoming’, it took place in the Lecture Hall of the new Dingwall Academy, which also contains the new Community Library. Local writers Jacqueline Liuba, winner of this year’s Neil Gunn Writing Competition, Christina MacDonald and Catriona Tawse read from their work. Following them Daily Mail columnist and author John MacLeod spoke of his new book ‘When I Heard The Bell’ and in the afternoon Andrew Greig read from his forthcoming ‘At the Loch of the Green Corrie’ and from his New… 2009-11-08T11:31:11+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/love_songs_for_men_again/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/love_songs_for_men_again/ For those who don’t know, Fortrose is a douce wee village along the coast a bit from Avoch and not too far from Chanonry Point, the Black Isle’s prime dolphin spotting site.  For those who do not have a Concise Scots Dictionary to hand (as I do now) ‘douce’ means sweet, pleasant, lovable, or again sedate, sober, respectable.  All true of Fortrose, but especially note that word ‘sober’. The former Royal Hotel has been bought by an intrepid American couple and renamed Anderson’s Hotel with no more than due self-respect.  I trailed along as part of a birthday party of… 2009-10-28T15:27:30+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/oban_bay/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/oban_bay/ Ian MacDonald, the amiable Director of the Gaelic Books Council, opened proceedings in the Caledonian Hotel, Oban. Also present was our new author, Catriona Lexy Campbell and our own Iain Gordon. Our second Gaelic author, Iain MacLean, was unable to be present and so our Iain was to read in his place. Also present were one or two luminaries from the world of Gaelic Education and an otherwise full house. Ian was witty as ever and Iain, as an advanced learner, was able not only to read but explain how our new books work – as books not only suitable… 2009-10-19T08:59:06+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/i_leave_this_at_your_ear/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/10/2009/i_leave_this_at_your_ear/ The year shuts down earlier here in the Highlands than it does further south. Yesterday I took my walk and noted that many of the trees are on the turn. What was green has gone gold and scatterings of leaves lie around their roots. Morning and evening light strikes at a lower angle to pick out landscape details, a quality it held in the spring but lost in the high days of summer. Up on the high summits this lasts for longer through the day and is one of the glories of moving around in these parts. Ross-shire had gone… 2009-10-11T13:05:48+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/piano_music/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/piano_music/ Music is here to heal us. Perhaps it really is just a slave to the selfish gene, but I suspect it emerged with the Big Bang along with gravity, comets that seed the planets with life prompting minerals, and the blackbird’s lovely song. This last is apparently a territorial warning to its own kind although a beautiful thing to us apes, hence subjectivity and interpretation. Seekers after pattern the danger is that we ascribe it meaning when it has none or are sucked through joy into the black hole of melancholy. First and last is the voice, the wordless tribal… 2009-09-27T17:08:07+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/mitsuko_uchida_post-perfomance_addendum/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/mitsuko_uchida_post-perfomance_addendum/ Mitsuko, of course, was wonderful. She appeared in wide black trousers and black sleeveless vest (very Japanese) topped by a blue, semi-transparent chiffon number (very European) that played with the light but left her forearms and hands free. When she bowed she did it the way the Beatles did in their early years – bending right over so that her mane of black hair fell to the ground in front of her. At least one audience member rose out of his seat and I am relieved to report that I did not actually have to be restrained. At the… 2009-09-22T18:40:22+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/mitsuko_uchida/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/mitsuko_uchida/ Have you heard this joke? The theatre manager is called to the stalls where a patron is reported to be making a nuisance of himself. When he arrives he finds the man slumped over three seats, his arms spread expansively across the backs, his legs resting on the seats in front. The manager asks, ‘Excuse me sir, do you have tickets for all those seats?’ to which the man replies, ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa’. Unconvinced, the manager asks, ‘May I see them, please?’ and the man replies as before, ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa’. Annoyed, the manager asks, ‘May I ask your name,… 2009-09-20T16:05:44+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/tower_ridge_by_guest_blogger_craig_weldon/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/tower_ridge_by_guest_blogger_craig_weldon/ Craig Weldon tells us how his book ‘The Weekend Fix’ was named. The following is extracted from the web site http://www.loveofscotland.com with thanks. You’re probably not that interested in the provenance of my book’s title, but I will tell you anyway. It was going to be Hip Flasks and Rucksacks, a title I liked suggested by a friend, but at the last moment The Weekend Fix bubbled into mind. It’s a fairly common phrase - a concept first grasped by me when someone described their attitude thus in The Angry Corrie: “Maybe I’m the typical blinkered enthusiast, unable to… 2009-09-16T15:53:12+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/hitlers_victory/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/hitlers_victory/ One of Saul Bellow’s best jokes, so good he uses it more than once, runs like this. Q: What is the difference between ignorance and indifference? A: I don’t know and I don’t care. Here is another quote, this time from his novella What Kind of Day Did You Have. ‘Society didn’t care about art anyway, it was busy with other things, and art became the plaything of intellectuals. Real painters, real painting, those are very rare. There are masses of educated people, and they’ll tell you that they are all for poetry, philosophy, or painting, but they don’t know… 2009-09-13T16:31:05+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/love_songs_for_men/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/09/2009/love_songs_for_men/ Setting out early for Glasgow and the launch of Craig Weldon’s The Weekend Fix I was glad not to have to drive. Rain was beating down and the wind picking up and the supremely independent woman driver insisted she would take the wheel of her own car. I could take over when we reached the City outskirts in the rush hour. There was nothing to view given the darkness of the early hour and, by her choice, the radio was left off. Conversation was not welcome before the first coffee stop so there was no sound but the regular, rhythmic… 2009-09-07T09:10:28+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/alfred_schnittke/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/alfred_schnittke/ A hugely enthusiastic audience listened to Alfred Schnittke’s oratorio ‘Nagasaki’ at the London proms a few nights ago. If they were of a list ticking turn of mind, as many formal music critics seem to be when it comes to Schnittke, they might have noted the many composer influences within the piece, Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev to name a few. At twenty four Schnittke had already begun the system that would be labelled polystylism. The composer would later describe the piece as naïve, but that was reference as much to the State approved text as to his arrangements. He would be… 2009-08-30T17:43:09+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/in_the_beginning_was_the_word/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/in_the_beginning_was_the_word/ ‘Yes contains no because yes is the word of permission. An absolute yes permits all things including refusals, denials, constraint and death.  More importantly it allows discussion, argument, agreements and disagreement, freedom and life. Democracy is a yes because it allows even anti-democratic elements to compete within it, leaving it to an electorate to reject or accept refusal, denial, constraint and death.  Sometimes an electorate will so accept, and then God help them. No does not contain yes because it does not allow. No as an absolute is a stopper. Against that, no within yes is a road sign.’ 2009-08-23T16:09:26+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/rowan_berries/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/rowan_berries/ There was a subtle change in the air the other day. Sitting down at this desk in the morning I felt a decided coolness. It didn’t last, but it was the first such airiness since spring turned to summer and it silently introduced the coming of autumn.  It wasn’t the only such announcement that day. On my walk I noted that the rowan berries were changing colour through a pale pink-orange towards their eventual bright red. West and south of where I live they are further on. Quite a number of local people look on the number and size… 2009-08-17T09:48:35+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/going_to_watch_ross_county/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/going_to_watch_ross_county/ Acknowledged for, even distinguished by, my knowledge of pies I was naturally one of those invited to the David Hamilton Memorial Lounge (aka: Strikers) at Victoria Park, Dingwall, to assist in the selection of pies for the coming season. The great good news at Ross County this year is not the ascension of Dave Siegel to the position of Chairman, nor the retention of our intelligent young manager, Derek Adams, nor yet the acquisition of several fine players, though all of those do indeed constitute good news, but the extension of Denise’s remit from the hospitality lounges to the pie… 2009-08-09T15:31:14+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/eating_a_peach_at_midnight/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/08/2009/eating_a_peach_at_midnight/ This blog comes to you not from RLD, but from MAF, taking over for one week only while pressing matters at Sandstone Towers keep our MD occupied.  This is partly because we have spent rather more time at Our Place in the Country than at S. Towers of late, and he needs to catch up with real work.  New homes always need things done to them, and this one has needed more than most.  I knew it would all cost more and take longer than first estimated (or hoped); what I didn’t foresee were the burst pipe creating a… 2009-08-02T12:03:36+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/the_cat_in_literature/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/the_cat_in_literature/ T. S. Eliot never really cut the mustard for me. The Waste Land seemed a bit too wasted, Four Quartets a bit dismembered. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock could be more ardent. In my experience the women in the room do come and go, but not to speak of Michaelangelo. In 1935 he came north with other Faber Directors to visit Neil and Daisy Gunn just a couple of miles from where I sit now. There is a picture of Eliot in John Pick and Gene Hart’s biography of Gunn in which he is seated outside Brae Farmhouse… 2009-07-26T19:32:04+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/NAKED_AS_NATURE_INTENDED/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/NAKED_AS_NATURE_INTENDED/ It really is embarrassing, but it is also much more serious than just a high colouring around the cheekbones. On 16th July this year Stephen Gough was once again jailed for 12 months, continuing the incarceration he had been committed to the previous December.  The charge was ‘breach of the peace’ complicated by ‘contempt of court’.  The actuality of this is that the peace remains unbreached by Mr Gough but very seriously breached by, first, a few Highlanders, followed by a too assiduous police force who might have applied restraint to their enthusiastic persecution, not to say wisdom.  Finally, the… 2009-07-19T16:35:27+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/THE_BOOK_AS_AN_OBJECT/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/THE_BOOK_AS_AN_OBJECT/ The book as an object of art has a long, not entirely honourable history.  The Book of Kells was illustrated, ‘illuminated’ as it was put, apparently on the Isle of Iona by Columban monks.  Tellingly, the melding of Christian and pre-Christian symbols could only come from a time when the new religion was making its peace with the old and absorbing it, an integrative rather than an outright imperial process.  By these means the Book was rendered not only religious but political and, by means of new colour technologies, beautiful.  The apparently decorative was also functional. Technology dints on the… 2009-07-12T18:14:53+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/OUR_NATIONAL_SPORT/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/07/2009/OUR_NATIONAL_SPORT/ Rugby is the greatest game.  Played as it should be it is the greatest sport.  Those of us who played it, and are now past it, almost invariably remember our rugby years as among the best of our lives.  The Clubs I was a member of, in Glasgow, Paisley and here in Highland, were community affairs where wives (‘wife’ wasn’t a bad word in those days) would come along and help, children were welcome, and sporting endeavour and comradeship were paramount. There were always thugs in the game, many with high reputations, and I am saddened to remember that I… 2009-07-05T11:12:26+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/DEATH_OF_A_SONG_AND_DANCE_MAN/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/DEATH_OF_A_SONG_AND_DANCE_MAN/ At about 2.00am on the morning of 1st January 2008 the Madrid Metro was crammed with people heading back from the City Centre.  Two, I guess, must have stood out from the rest; the rest being dressed in coats, scarves, more or less sensibly, more or less fashionably.  One was wearing jeans, a blackberry coloured fleecetop (made in Poolewe and labelled to prove it) with one of those little gold-coloured Munro-Compleatist badges, carrying a paper bag with, yes, a bottle of Glenmorangie in it.  As Popeye memorably said, ‘I am what I am’. New Year for Scots is about as… 2009-06-28T17:45:12+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/leave_those_cobwebs_a_while_longer/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/leave_those_cobwebs_a_while_longer/ A few years ago Sandstone Press entered electronic publishing by commissioning novellas in English from Ron Butlin and Suhayl Saadi, in Gaelic from Flora MacDonald and Michael Newton, and poetry from Anna Aguilar-Amat of Catalonia translated by our friend Anna Crowe.  We applied some of our thinking from the Sandstone Vista series for adult learners about the value of background colour, some other thinking about wide paragraph breaks as being particularly valuable to those who are reading from a screen, and had Edward Garden Graphic Design create some really quite beautiful PDFs.  We traded them through our web site using… 2009-06-21T18:59:11+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/THE_NAIRN_BOOK_AND_ARTS_FESTIVAL/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/THE_NAIRN_BOOK_AND_ARTS_FESTIVAL/ Best known for its golf course and a romantic association with Charlie Chaplin, Nairn’s long-past symbiosis with fishing and the sea has been its greatest claim to fame until recent years.  The calendar pages are torn off month by month though, the diaries stacked away year on year.  Fishertown has become quite the place to live for the well off with, on its fringes, the Little Theatre, as good a venue as any for literary events.  Enter the NAIRN BOOK AND ARTS FESTIVAL; witness its dramatic year on year growth at the Little Theatre, the new Community Centre and a… 2009-06-14T15:01:57+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/THE_NEIL_GUNN_VIEWPOINT/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/06/2009/THE_NEIL_GUNN_VIEWPOINT/ On Thursday 4th June 2009 a small group gathered outside the new Optical Express shop on Inverness High Street.  I say new; in fact, the building is far from new.  Before the optician moved in it was a bank and, way back in the 1930s, it housed the Excise.  Among the excise employees was the novelist Neil Gunn and that is why we were gathered.  Some years ago the Neil Gunn Trust prompted Highland Council to have a commemorative plaque fixed to the wall.  This they did but the Highland capital has much the same share of spoilers and naysayers… 2009-06-07T17:10:39+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/the_warm_shores_of_womanhood/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/the_warm_shores_of_womanhood/ On the last stress filled day, when we finalised the last dots and commas of RLS IN LOVE, the wych elm in front of Sandstone Towers declared that spring had given way to summer by discharging untold thousands of tiny, seed bearing leaves onto the breeze.  So swirlingly, chaotically thick were they in the air, I had only to hold out my hand to catch a dozen. Stuart Campbell, the author, by now texting and phoning from his travels around St Anne’s, Lancashire, was troubling over every hyphen and space, not to mention finding a new poem (To Belle Strong:… 2009-05-31T20:02:29+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/THE_PRECARIOUS_LAMP/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/THE_PRECARIOUS_LAMP/ Matching the nuts, bolts and lubricated surfaces of practical outreach to an inbuilt, foundational internationalism is one of Sandstone’s great challenges.  We might say it is one of the great challenges to our present, rapidly altering world. The past does not give way to the future without a struggle.  The internet is a great aid, of course, but books are solid objects that have to be stored and transported, and readers have to be persuaded that these compendiums of thought and feeling are worth laying down their pounds, dollars or euros for. A glance at the Contacts page of our… 2009-05-24T19:40:20+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/HIGHLAND_SPRING/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/HIGHLAND_SPRING/ It’s mid-May and my daily walk by the Cromarty Firth is decorated with flowering broom and hawthorn.  As far as can be seen the ospreys have not yet returned from Africa, but return they will, and the geese have departed, leaving the wide sandflats at the mouth of the Conon to the anglers and the seals. As spring turns to summer there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than the Scottish Highlands.  July and August tend to be wet but, on the far side of summer, September and October can be as fine as spring, bringing big… 2009-05-17T15:42:17+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/ten_years_and_growing/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/ten_years_and_growing/ After more years than I cared to remember the Scottish Parliament had been wholeheartedly endorsed by the electorate and the Referendum had summoned majorities more massive than even the dizziest optimists dared to expect.  It seemed as if half my life had been wasted on false loyalties and bogus ideologies, but now the barriers were down.  In due course, when we were ready again, more changes would follow.  They were bound to. Almost a catchphrase at Sandstone Press is, ‘Most setbacks are for the best’.  Perhaps we weren’t ready at the first Referendum but, by jings, we were now.  I… 2009-05-11T18:56:13+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/our_mutual_friend/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/05/2009/our_mutual_friend/ By the end of August 1939 Wysten Auden had arrived in New York with his lover, Chester Kallman, with whom he would spend the rest of his life, not always in New York and not always happily.  On the 1st September, a few hours after learning of the German invasion of Poland he sat alone in a gay bar on 52nd Street and there began, if not on paper, certainly in his head, his great poem, 1st September 1939. His thoughts on his own position are not recorded but they must surely have been melancholy.  For all he had been… 2009-05-04T19:10:15+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/the_sad_news_about_waterstones_peterborough/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/the_sad_news_about_waterstones_peterborough/ On the day of writing this blog I received an email from one of those colleagues I now have in the trade whom I have never met but, because this is the internet age, feel I know almost as a friend.  I won’t embarass him by using his name but it was his duty to let me know that another High Street bookshop is closing down and that some of their Sandstone stock is to be sent back.  We manage a joke or two on the subject.  I tell him the shops wouldn’t have gone down if they had only… 2009-04-27T20:28:15+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/SHOES_FOR_PEACE/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/SHOES_FOR_PEACE/ Sandstone’s Robert Davidson was recently invited to judge a poetry competition organised by Neil Paynter, editor of Coracle, the magazine of the Iona Community.  Others on the panel were Neil himself, Kathy Galloway and Jan Sutch Pickard.  The first three choices and two runners up are published in the spring 2009 issue. The same issue tells us that Kathy, who has seemed to be the only possible Leader for the Iona Community, is to hand over to Peter Macdonald after seven years at the helm.  Best wishes to both for the future. The theme was Peace and the winner is… 2009-04-21T07:20:01+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/changing_seasons/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/changing_seasons/ The first veteran car of the year chugged and banged its way past Sandstone Towers the other day.  This is how winter turns to spring in the Highlands.  The geese depart.  The swallows arrive.  Cars with their bonnets belted down are steered north by drivers with silk scarves flying from their necks. The first quarter of the year is gone in a blink.  Sandstone has published two books already and memories are accumulating.  Our Director, Iain Gordon showed his musical mettle at FICKLE MAN launches, singing and speaking at Burns events.  Our partners at THE DROUTH report a good reception… 2009-04-13T14:46:23+00:00 http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/welcome_to_sandstones_latest_venture_._._/ http://www.sandstonepress.com/blogs/sandstonepress/04/2009/welcome_to_sandstones_latest_venture_._._/ . . . and come with us on our latest step further into the 21st century and internationalism. From this point we will be regularly featurng the blogs of some our Sandstone authors - that is to say, some of the liveliest, most interesting and important, some of the funniest, some of the newest voices around. First Ron McMillan, author of the Saltire nominated BETWEEN WEATHERS, will be posting every Thursday (more or less), properly beginning on the 16th April but getting a toe in the door today.  Ron is back in Scotland just now, but soon will be returning… 2009-04-07T08:49:50+00:00