We all have little rituals and habits which are woven into our lives. As midsummer approaches, it’s always a fair bet I’ll be packing the camper van and pointing it northwards to Scotland for a couple of weeks of parking up in as remote a location as I can find, waking to the sound of waves on the shore, watching seals, otters, basking sharks, and gannets while I have my morning coffee.
For the past few years, I’ve added a few poetry gigs to my meandering itinerary, because well, why not? That means I’ve read my poems to a packed room in Orkney (my northernmost gig to date) then driven under the light of the Simmer Dim to park by a beach under a star-filled sky.
Soon, a much-loved VW camper van will be trundling north once again, and I’ll be cutting myself free of a world of emails, social media, and poetry websites I don’t update half as often as I should. I’ve half-a-dozen gigs set up along the route, and it’d be lovely to see some of you if any of them are in your neck of the woods (details on the ‘news’ page, btw). No Orkney gig this time – I’m not sure we’ll make it that far – but that’s just a reason to plan another trip north next year, isn’t it?