Warm Days Will Never Cease

Warm Days Will Never Cease

Photo: Vicky Jirayu / Shutterstock.com ‘Kate,’ you say, ‘summer is nearly over. There’s something you need to know.’ It’s August and we’re wearing summer dresses in the beer garden. Purple vines climb trellises and the evening air carries the murmurs of people who are...
Love in the Time of Welly Vodka

Love in the Time of Welly Vodka

Photo by Charles Rispin / Welly Club, Beverley Rd, Hull / CC BY-SA 2.0 I want to tell the story about the two boys I saw at a Pigeon Detectives concert, stacked together like a totem pole, arms spread wide while the audience milled under them like clumsy, bumbling...
This is how I drink whiskey in the morning

This is how I drink whiskey in the morning

The same guy who gave Ron Swanson a snifter at Lagavulin was the same guy who taught me how to pull whiskey from a barrel, a skill I’ve never used since. In 2016, he was smaller than on TV, only to my shoulder, and I wondered how we shrank over time and in real life,...
The Munlochy Clootie Well

The Munlochy Clootie Well

It’s a bright July day. We’re driving back from Rosemarkie Beach when you ask, ‘Have you ever seen a clootie well?’ I’m certain you know I haven’t. I’m a Londoner who grew up in the wide spaces of the American Midwest. You’re an English ecologist inhabiting the...