‘The reader doesn’t need to have answers, but they do need to have theories.’
Lake Like a Mirror. In Chile it is morning and I am sitting down to write about translating Sok Fong’s stories. She tells me that in her piece she might write about ambiguity and my immediate thought is that in this case I might write about amphibians. When I was younger, I used to mix the two words up – ambiguous, amphibious: such similar forms, all those syllables – and even now that I know better, I think of them as related: both make me think of a murky colour, some sort of greenish-grey; watery.
Died: January 4, 2021. KAY Ullrich – lifelong nationalist and former SNP MSP, who has died aged 77 – revelled in her reputation as a glamorous raconteur who would hold court with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Innately flamboyant, she loved to recall how she walked down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile with Sean Connery at the opening of the Scottish Parliament. But no-one who knew her ever mistook her conviviality for frivolousness, or her penchant for stylish clothes for a lack of substance. Ullrich was a woman whose political convictions were at her core; a woman who, having escaped an abusive marriage, went on to forge a career as a social worker, specialising in child protection.