The piece that meant the most to me in 2025 - written after a traumatic week, the words tumbled out of me. Thinking of all the NHS overseas workers propping up the system and keeping our loved ones alive. Where would be without them. open.substack.com/pub/nicolake...

'...to the dark ice floor...' -Guido Gezelle 🎨Anna + Elena Balbusso #BookWormSat

Today I went slow-worm-hunting with a friend. We found two. I'd like to bring one back with me, but Mum, well I'm afraid she doesn't like slow-worms.

London, 1948 Two Bobbies examine the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree through the smog of a grey December day #Christmas 🎄

Christmas at Camelot (from 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' by Simon Armitage) Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Previously on Bylines Scotland...

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone! Yoruba nativity scene, mid-20th century

Right, Carols from Kings about to land which means it the start of Christmas proper. Cheers everyone 🥂

A French mouse riding a lobster to bring you all festive wishes of peace, joy, health and happiness. I couldn't ask for anything more.

24 Dec: Feeling a strange presence in your home this Christmas? Old folklore says an elder twig dipped in oil and floated on water on #ChristmasEve will turn and point to any mischievous spirits or witches hiding away. Keep a birch broom at the ready, and sweep them out the door!

Christmas Tree Paraskeva Clark 1941

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar Final window ‘Skating by Moonlight’ Artist: Ronald Lampitt

Every year, people mock this tree. But I love it anyway. It reminds us that if we stand together in tough times, we can overcome anything. Merry Christmas from my family to yours. 🎄✨

Dec. 23, 1775: The Sultan, a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, is launched at Harwich. Built for service in America, it won't see action until 1778.

Remember: It ys okaye to be lonelye. It ys okaye to feel lost. It ys okaye to be sad. It ys okaye yf nobody ys arounde. It ys okaye to have no plannes or just small plannes. It ys okaye to have big plannes that seem exhausting. It ys okaye to be a mess. Take care of thyself. Thou art amazinge.

Wishing all you lovely people a very Merry Christmas. 'Forcing Garden in Winter', from Humphry Repton's 'Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening', 1816.

Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) is the Slavic version of Santa Claus who delivers gifts with his granddaughter Snegurochka (Snow Maiden) in a troika pulled by three horses. For a time his image was banned under the Soviet Union due to his origins as a pagan deity. #FairyTaleTuesday

Half Ma’am Half Brisket

A Song of Winter Franz Johnston n.d.

The Soldier Drinks by Marc Chagall, 1923 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137294

In the Mountains (A Northern Nativity) William Kurelek 1975

E.H. Shepard. #illustration #winter #TheWindInTheWillows #EHShepard #KennethGrahame

Godfried Schalcken, Girl with a Candle, 1670-75, Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

In the new issue of National Geographic Traveller, I wrote about why you should look beyond Brazil for an Amazon adventure. There are shout-outs for Bolivia’s Parque Nacional Madidi, the world’s most biodiverse protected area, & Llanos de Moxos, a little-visited region filled with ancient sites.

In 1500 Henry VIII's agent, a man named Poynings, visited the mayor of Cambridge. The bill for his visit included charges for: 3 gallons of red wine; 3 of claret; a gallon & a pottle of malmsey; beer; sugar; bread; milk; cream; a cod & another cod; a turbot; and 3 eels to roast.

I’m always a day late on Bluesky!! For the winter solstice, my Mari Lwyd panels- Through nature to eternity and The Heaven’s embroidered cloths.

Hope For The Fuschia gouache and aquarelle pencils #pleinair #art #painting #garden #nature #mixedmedia #colorful #visualarts #hope#optimism

I like that mistletoe increases the odds of being kissed. More plants should offer temporary environmental status. Brawling under lingonberries. The soft yearning of a love that dare not speak its name beneath the nightshade.

The shorteste daye The longest nighte Welcome, sun Welcome, lighte

Being ill on the longest day after weeks of sickness. I’m tired of the dark. Tired of the emptiness. Tired. Thank you those who kept walking, exploring, sharing - nature, art, photography and more! Love to all this night xx

Two pigeons in Euston turn to me with such a look on their little, grey faces that I can't help wondering how long they've been having an affair.

In honor of the Winter Solstice, I will also be cold, distant & filled with darkness

Happy Winter Solstice folks❄️ Here’s to lighter times✨ #Yuletide

53 seconds of bumblebees on my winter flowering honeysuckle just now. It’s warm enough today (9 celsius) for them to forage. This shrub is stupendous for bees in winter-like a small oasis of nectar for them, plus it smells gorgeous so good for my human hooter & brain too 🌿🐝💛🖤💛🐝🌿

Day twenty of #ArtAdventCalendar Here’s a pair of miniature woodcock (made out of clay) reading all about themselves in my Observer’s Book of Birds.

To me, artist Allen Seaby is best known as the illustrator of the first Ladybird bird books. But I also love his Japanese influenced woodcuts. ‘Snow and Hare’ (c.1923)

📷 Thierry Vezon

Antifascist stickers spotted in Dundee, Scotland

Strutting into Saturday like it’s the last weekend before Christmas… Yes it’s Day 20 of our advent calendar and we’re looking at the Pegasuses/Pegasi/Pegsicles (okay we made up the last one) that feature on the Merchant Adventurers’ Coat of Arms. 1/2

Something lovely for the weekend! A 1,800 year-old Roman glass flask shaped like a mouse! Squeak squeak! 🐭❤️ 📷 by me www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti... #Archaeology

"Carol Singers", a Claughton Pellew wood engraving from December 19th 1930’s Radio Times. A masterpiece, I feel entirely safe in suggesting.

Firmin Baes, Belgian (1874-1945), A Woman Sewing, c. 1900, pastel on board, 58.4 x 48.2 cm, private collection

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake." ~ Francis Bacon Rays of Light in the Forest 🎨 Igor Sakharov

"Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres" Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly #GothicAdvent

Nebuchadnezzar, by William Blake, 1795-1805 (flipped) #NetflixPartner

🎨 Alex Russell Flint

Day 16 - Tree Doors…. Four for the price of one today as I often forget to post here! I do love a portal!