Amy Jardine

  • What Happened When We Took Our Rescue Cat Home

    When we got our cat, he was small and neat, still and silent. He was motionless to the point of invisibility. I was surprised to find him in amongst laundry I’d been folding, or on a chair I was about to sit down on. He only ever moved after cautious consideration. Then he would pad…

  • A Christmas Happy List for 2020

    Nobody asked for this. And yet, here it is: my festive list of happy things for Christmas 2020!    It’s been an age since I’ve written a blog post, but can promise I’ve a good reason: 2020 was the year we welcomed our baby son into the world. And promptly apologised to him and tried…

  • Three Books for October

    Somehow a few weeks went by, and then it was a year since I last updated this blog. How remiss of me. Despite this apparent wilting of creativity, the writing side of life has been trundling along nicely, with articles of mine appearing in the Scottish Review (if you haven’t had a look, the SR…

  • Fewer Choices, More Time

    January. The long morning-after. A time of mad diets, tentative declarations of sobriety, and a communal wish to be anywhere but here and now. January does something evil to those of us in a cold climate: it’s so bad, so unrelentingly bleak, that it begins to feel like a judgement from on high. We regret…

  • George Michael: My Hero

    So this is Christmas. We are divided, between those who are easily swayed by the mob mentality (Chrrriiiistmas they scream, eggnog drunk), and those who deem this season a massive waste of time and money. I would fall in to the latter (because I hate spending money and group projects are the worst) except this…

  • 10 Love Stories for Valentines Day

    Wandering around the shops today I saw a man walking very fast, carrying a bunch of red roses. Ah, Schmalentine’s Day. I’m a little envious of people who don’t have a fuck to give about this. I wish I could be so cold and unfeeling. I tend to go overboard with the paper heart bunting.…

  • ‘Hardly a Season for Daylight’ – reading Lanark by Alasdair Gray

    I hated Glasgow for the first four years that I lived here. Before I moved, I’d been warned that it would rain interminably, but ‘the humour’ would make up for it. The city seemed to me (eighteen years old and fresh from the Highlands, as green as you get) just a big brawling mass without…

  • Secret Style Icons No.5 & No.6: Thelma and Louise

    ‘I don’t ever remember feeling this awake’ – Thelma It starts the way all films should – two gals, a convertible and a loaded gun, off on a road trip together. They’ve got high-waisted jeans and enormous swaying hair. They’re getting away from hard work, boredom and Thelma’s cretin of a husband. What could possibly…

  • Banned Books, Pseudonyms and a Secret Magazine

    “Secrets, silent, stony, sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.” James Joyce, Ulysses Maybe it’s  a symptom of living in almost certain safety, to find the idea of banned books romantic. Imagine: the soft crackling of a paper bag containing a hard-back first…

  • The Introvert’s Guide to Disappearing

    Important Daily Activities: An Incomplete List Make coffee. Dress. Neglect to check mirror for errors made while dressing. Check Facebook, Instagram, What’s App, news websites and Twitter. Stare out of window at high rises. Feel tired. Download a Taylor Swift song. Arrive at work Attend meetings that go on for 56 hours Answer several million…