Recent weeks in particular have shown us how short the media’s attention span is. Any time a new story has appeared, the previous one has been virtually abandoned. The war in Syria, that once dominated the TV screens and front pages, was replaced by the turmoil in Ukraine, which was then replaced by the takeover of swathes of Iraq by…

Three friends were stuck on a desert island for a long time, until one day they found a magic lamp. They rubbed the lamp hard, and out popped a genie. The genie said that he could only give three wishes: so, since there were three men, each man would get one wish. The first one went: “I hate it here.…

Last Thursday started out as an exceptionally beautiful and unusually relaxing day for me. After a pleasant long walk from Portgordon to Spey Bay and back, I took a wee nap, which was interrupted suddenly by a sound on my mobile phone. Still half asleep I read a notification from the BBC that a Malaysian airliner had been lost. Startled…

Last winter my mum suddenly found out that she would be having two weeks off, so I invited her to come over for a wee break. Obviously with my adopted Scottish soul I didn’t want to pay through the nose for her flights, and I didn’t want to waste my precious time checking every possible airline’s website. So I turned…

Once a month we, the students in the seminary, had a talk by our rector. Every time he was talking about the spiritual life, current affairs and recent happenings. I held a genuine respect for that man, but in his talks he tended to pick up negative examples from seminary life and consequently the overall picture was always pretty gloomy…