I missed the trip to Flanders Moss which opened the Callander Weekend this year, so on the first day of the Glasgow Weekend, the Senior Partner and I went out there, taking advantage of what was possibly the best day of the lot.

Other creatures seemed to think so too. The raised edges of the walways had a great many of these beautiful newts basking on them,

and there seemed to have been a mass hatching, or fledging of these –

which I believe are black darters. We had hoped to see geese coming in, as we are beginning to hear them in greater numbers flying overhead, but we were too early, and we had to beat a hasty retreat as a sudden shower blew in on us from the shoulders of Ben Ledi.

The wind is here in earnest now; the day-time temperature has dropped significantly, and the rain is starting. Life is beginning to settle more indoors, and I am writing a couple of reviews – one of the new Dark Mountain anthology, and one very exciting one, which I’ll talk about later, for the Scottish Review of Books. I’m hoping to get a fair amount of reading done during the winter quiet, and to move into a new kind of writing. We’ll see.