In Italy, on the eve of the Epiphany, La Befana, a witch with folkloric & Christian roots, visits children, filling stockings with nuts, fruit & sweets. In Urbania, there is a big festival where befanas dance in every doorway. One descends from the bell tower throwing out caramels as she flies.

Sant’Angelo in Vado with a light covering of snow.

This is what cribs look like in Italy: entire miniature worlds. They remind me of WH Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts. Something incredible might have been happening in their midst but people had things to do - bread to bake, wood to chop - and carried on doing them.

Sunrise inside Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

"Paris, the City of Light, is also the City of Death." If you like graveyards, foxes, cats and The Doors then perhaps you will enjoy this feature on historic cemeteries of the French capital – a longer version of the article I wrote for Smithsonian Magazine. smallfinds.substack.com/p/the-parisi...

This has always been the maddest of the charity shops near me. Today they unveiled their masterpiece.

In a wee place called Sant’Angelo in Vado which is so, so quiet but all its historic streets and back alleys have figures making their way to the manger.

Message from the wee’un: “Saw that River Kelvin kingfisher you’re always trying to find this morning.” I mean to say, how is that fair after all the hours I’ve put in to no avail? ;)

Walking round London like a child in a sweetie shop

Wild London is a pure joy: the foxes, the falcons, the deer and a 99-year-old man still utterly captivated by the world.

Just missing the picture of Betty Blue.

“It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity... It’s as simple as that.” -Tove Jansson

Once more up The Whangie before the year ends. Wee bit icy.

It is a little known fact that they prerecord the Jools Holland Hootenanny - all the people on screen are faking it being New Year for tv. For eg, last year’s was prerecorded June 15th, 1535, during the Siege of Munster, look carefully and you can see John of Leiden mingling with the audience.

This is a good, balanced piece on Alaa Abd el-Fattah, I think: highly critical of successive governments but concluding that, once granted, citizenship is citizenship. "I don’t want to live in a country where naturalised or joint citizens are treated as 2nd-class Britons, forever on probation."

"The perfect conclusion to a wonderful trilogy, and like its predecessors it will lift spirits and warm hearts." Many thanks to "Scots Whay Hae!" for naming Upon A White Horse in the top ten non-fiction books of 2025. www.scotswhayhae.com/post/as-a-ma...

This is Virginia Astley's beautiful new record The Singing Places. It can be ordered from her Bandcamp page, I think. One of the many delighful things about this music is that the field recordings of birds, from chiffchaff to wren, are listed in the credits in the order that each species appears.

Some favourite bits from Helen Garner's diaries so far. "Wishing..I had a real job with people I didn't particularly like, so I wouldn't have to produce my own raison d’être every every day, like a spider yanking thread out of its own guts, or wherever the hell they pull it from.'"

"I told them, then, how his dad and I had painted his nursery yellow when he was a tiny, unborn thing, known to us only as 'button'”. My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column on a paint job and the small joys that keep us from becoming bitter. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2572507...

Spent the afternoon playing with my pal @jentrueland.bsky.social’s epically great dolls’ house. It’s way more beautiful than my actual house.

"Over Christmas, all the ghosts become unruly ..." This is a really beautiful column, by @danigaravelli.bsky.social

"I told them, then, how his dad and I had painted his nursery yellow when he was a tiny, unborn thing, known to us only as 'button'”. My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column on a paint job and the small joys that keep us from becoming bitter. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2572507...

7 July 1967: Barbara Pym discovers Procol Harum.

Maybe the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen in Troon today. And the water so still and the grass so green.

"Lucid, profound and moving, it is his best book." Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for including Upon A White Horse in the Engelsberg Ideas Books of 2025. It's an honour to appear in this list of excellent works. engelsbergideas.com/reviews/book...

Since people are doing year highlights, here’s one of mine: the gift of one of Muriel Spark’s famous James Thin notebooks. Imagine what words she might have written on the pages if she had the chance.

How wonderful amidst #Christmas2025 preparations to hear another gem from the BBCArchive BBCRadio4. @cerysmatthews.bsky.social celebrates the place of the child in the experience of #Christmas, through memory, story & performance. Captivating. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Still thinking about the guy in the post office telling me I was a "clever girl" for remembering to put the sender's address on the back of my package - what a high!

Another Christmas song that isn't a Christmas song. Vashti Bunyan & Twice As Much Coldest Night of the Year youtu.be/eCcBEj6VnpA?...

A wee Christmas big-up for @karingoodwin.bsky.social who never stops trying to shine a light on injustice everywhere.

On Sunday we’ll publish our weekly investigation with The Ferret as usual. But this week it isn’t about uncovering hidden stories here in Scotland. Karin Goodwin, The Ferret’s co-editor, has been in the West Bank 👇

One kitchen painted, two cakes decorated: once-a-year domestic goddess.

Happy Saturday

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar Window 20 ‘Winter Sunrise’ Artist: SR Badmin

"An insightful and engaging reflection on the appeal of the ancient." Many thanks to Katherine Harvey and The Times for this review of Upon A White Horse. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

You lot need Dick Van Dyke singing Let's Go Fly a Kite on his 100th birthday more than you know.

A fascinating interview with Dani Garavelli (one of my favourite journalists). Discussing the ethical implications of investigating & writing about teen suicide, and interviewing vulnerable people. Her findings on the failures of the system are alarming, & her writing humane & respectful.

Christmas came early for me this year when I got to spend time on set of the Two Doors Down festive special www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

UK to rejoin EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme

A wee podcast I made with the Civic Journalism Lab about reporting on the Polmont suicides. soundcloud.com/civicjournal...

In the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, 24-year-old Hanady Hathaleen is raising three children alone after her husband Awdah was shot dead in settler violence. Now the family faces demolition orders on their home www.theferret.scot/a...

Last to the party by years, but finally saw season one of True Detective and f*** me there are aspects of Matthew McConaughey’s performance that will haunt me for days to come. The stillness, for one thing.

"He draws his power not from the sheer force of his arguments and personality, but increasingly just how recklessly the immigration issue has been handled by the political establishment." Nesrine Malik would have been my columnist of the year. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Look after each other.

@neilmackay.bsky.social @danigaravelli.bsky.social @jamesmcenaney.bsky.social All excellent and wide ranging articles today in the Sunday Herald. Highly recommended.

Amongst the horrific news coming from Sydney there is news of extraordinary bravery. The very best of people, and the very, very worst, too.