by Wendy MacIntyre

The Promise of Horses

by Wendy MacIntyre

It is fully five years since I began my daily visits to the horses, Willie and Johnny. I met them first when the pandemic protocols imposed physical distancing. I needed a road wider than the narrow river trail I habitually walked. The dirt and gravel Quarry Road, with its bordering meadows and two dairy farms, was the solution.

And there they were, behind the wooden railings of their roadside paddock – two well-groomed graceful horses who approached when I passed by, apparently curious. The taller of the two, a rich chestnut colour, has a white diamond on his forehead. This, I later learned from Kevin, their owner, is Johnny. The smaller horse, a charcoal black, is Willie. Because Kevin is often listening to country music in his garage, I assume the horses are named after Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. But I have never had this confirmed. read more

The Parrot and the Book

by Wendy MacIntyre

Last Sunday a man strode by me on Bridge Street with a riot of colour and widespread wings on his shoulder. He was taking his great macaw, of scarlet, indigo and gold plumage, for a stroll. Happily, it was a mild day. “He does not like the cold,” the man told a passerby who asked about the parrot. Man and bird looked absolutely companionable.

I was reminded of the parrot who features strongly in Iris Murdoch’s The Book and the Brotherhood. A small African Grey enters the life of eleven-year-old Gerard Hernshaw when clients of his father’s leave the country and cannot take the bird with them. Gerard falls “instantly and passionately” in love with the parrot, whom he names Grey. Its very presence in the house makes him feel he is waking up every day to a miracle. He delights in Grey’s grace and good health, his clever yellow eyes and his pure pale grey feathers with a touch of scarlet in his tail and wingtips. read more

John Sakeouse, from Stowaway to Cherished Citizen of Edinburgh

by Wendy MacIntyre

21/6/2023 read more

A Brave Journalist’s Foray into the World’s Most Toxic Wastelands

by Wendy MacIntyre

What happens when the world’s most devastated sites are left to recover on their own, free of human interference? In her meticulously researched Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape, Scottish investigative journalist Cal Flyn gives us an answer both apocalyptic and optimistic.

A writer of remarkable physical and emotional courage, Flyn takes us to the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, largely abandoned after the 1986 meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Although visitors are barred from entering the decaying buildings, she defies the order and finds everywhere a new forest of birch, maple and poplar rising amidst the ruins. This resurgence is astounding, given that Chernobyl is the most radioactively contaminated site in history. In the worst affected areas in the aftermath of the meltdown, every mammal perished within a few days. However, by 2010 wildlife had rebounded, including deer, elk, lynx, boar, beaver, and even the brown bear, not seem in the region for a century. read more

Lambhill

by Wendy MacIntyre

Last month I had to cancel a planned trip to Scotland because of the sudden decline and death of our beloved cat Mumbai. He was a rare, sunny-natured, empathetic being, sensitive to our least physical or mental anguish, and always generous with his comfort. He was with us fourteen and a half years, a stretch of time I now recognize as akin to living with a guardian angel. I do not say this lightly. His compassion was palpable, warm as his fur.

Had the journey to Scotland gone ahead, I would have been visiting the gravesite of one of the kindest persons I have ever encountered – my grandmother Jessie MacIntyre. She is buried in Glasgow’s Lambhill Cemetery with her parents. I last saw my grandmother when I was five, the year my parents immigrated to Canada. She doted on me, her only grandchild. I was aware, even at that young age, of her tender concern for others’ well-being and her always gentle nature. read more

The Happy Prince in Reading Gaol

by Wendy MacIntyre

Sentenced to two years’ hard labour for so-called “gross indecency, Oscar Wilde spent his first month in prison bound to a treadmill. Six hours day, he laboured up the same short, steep incline, with five minutes’ rest every twenty-five minutes − activity lacking all purpose other than degradation. His next punishment, carried out all day alone in his cell, was picking apart tarred rope to extract the fibre known as oakum. This work split open the flesh of his hands.

He suffered regular bouts of dysentery and diarrhoea as a result of the wretched prison diet and unsanitary living conditions. An ear infection, which prison authorities refused to treat, left him partially deaf. The glittering, self-created dandy who delighted in outraging convention was no more. Gaunt, with shaven head and coarse prison garb, he had come to resemble the statue in his children’s story, The Happy Prince, rendered repulsively drab once his jewels and gold leaf covering were stripped away. read more