Digging a Hole for Douglas

Almost dark, the air cold and damp. A lawn merges into a shrubbery with large patches of wet, bare, mossy earth. I place Douglas, stiff and still, on the ground. I look around; no dog-walkers, no noisy gangs of feral teenagers gathered round a bottle of tonic wine, no rough sleepers hunting for a dry…

The Highland Line

After a short pause at a busy station in a cheerful tourist town, the train swung through a mile or two of tame green farmland and then shot into a dark wooded pass with the suddenness of going into a tunnel. A peat-dark river foamed on the right as the train threaded the green gloom…