that's curious

A Creature of Two Minds

One of my favourite books is Grendel, by John Gardner (1971). The story is a meta-fiction of the Old English poem Beowulf. The novel follows loosely the same plot as the poem, but offers Grendel’s personal description of his war with Hrothgar and eventual, fatal encounter with Beowulf. The book runs through several philosophical themes…

In the Hallway

I am sat in the hallway at Salamander Place, hot water bottle at my feet. Mist has blended out the deeper view across to the other side of town. I have a definite sadness that the site across the road is to become flats and houses. We are a destructive species. All wild plants reclaiming…

Community Crofting

I am a community crofter in the Leith Links, Edinburgh, and have been for about a year and a half to date. This year I’ll be expanding on my writing from 2016 about the croft’s flora, to encompass the entire gastronomic experience of crofting here in the city. Over the coming months there will be…

Goose murder (No photos)

Back in November I helped murder 21 beautiful geese. I did it in part because of my brother, Matt. We grew up together as vegetarians. Eating meat was always an option as our family were mixed veggie-meat eaters, but it was only I who turned to the dark side. During my teenage years it became…

Soil, Food Procurement

The topics this week during MSc Gastronomy have been ‘The Evolution of Food Procurement’ and ‘Soil’. The content is rather well summed up by the topic titles. Food procurement has changed over the years, or ‘evolved’, with examples of every kind still in practice: hunting & gathering, foraging, and agriculture, all in various complementing or…

Leaves

Leaves were being blown off the sycamores in Leith Community Croft this evening. The drippy Autumnal vibe is tangible, daylength is shrinking at an alarming rate. For me this is the time of year signifying an educational sledgehammer to the brain. It also means the days feel knackeringly long – despite the aforementioned sunlight contraction….

University Mental Health Day 2016

As the title of this post suggests, today is University Mental Health Day. One of the aims of the campaign is to Raise awareness of the challenges that students face at university and what that means for their mental health. While it is obviously important for people to talk about mental health issues in general,…

Scrubbing away to find sponge disease microbes

Diving in the Maldives is, in a word, perfection. The islands are a series of coral atolls, their warm waters bustling with a glittering array of animals. Diffuse shoals of fish drift, languidly, above waving anemones. Rays glide in dignified silence, sharks agitate. All around are the dazzling stripes and loud colours that typify tropical…