For the past few days, my mother has been calling me with a slight alarm in her voice. “Laurie, I was looking at my calendar and I see that you’re going to Scotland on August 7th and then I looked and you don’t come back until the 25th. Is that true?” “Yes, Mom, I’m going to teach a writing retreat in Scotland. And first, I’m going to Edinburgh for the theatre festival.” “I had no idea,” she replied, although of course we’ve been talking about my upcoming trip for months. “Karyn will be here,” I reassured her. “And Lizzy is home now. And Darren (my brother—her son) lives in California now. He’ll come down and visit you.” “It’s not that I don’t want you to go. It’s just a long time without you here. I’m going to miss you.” “I’m going to miss you, too.” The next day: the ... [Continue Reading]

It’s the morning of my departure. Saying goodbye to Mom is the last thing on my list. I drive over to Sunshine Villa and let myself in her room. She’s sitting, as she usually is, on the flowered couch, newspapers scattered on the table before her. I clear off a space and sit beside her. I scootch over and take her hand. “When are you leaving?” “In an hour.” “You mean, right now? TODAY?” “Yeah, I’m leaving right after I leave here.” “How long will you be gone?” “Two-and-a-half weeks.” “Ohh…..” A wave of unhappy concern flashes across her face. “Darren is coming to see you this weekend and Karyn will come visit you. Lizzy will be around. You’ll be okay, Mom.” “It’s not that I can’t manage on my own. But I’m used to having you around. I’m used to talking to you. We ... [Continue Reading]

Today, I decided to catalogue the world’s greatest salads. I hadn’t intended to do that, but after the salad I had today in the London Heathrow airport, I felt compelled to start a list. Today’s salad, at a large sprawling restaurant called Giraffe, was called the Super Healthy Veggie and Oregano Feta Salad. It included marinated feta, broccoli, sugar snap peas, alfalfa, borlotti beans, avocado, bulgar wheat, toasted seeds, rocket, cherry tomatoes and baby spinach in an herby salsa verde dressing. It clocked in at 676 calories (a factoid on the menu) and cost just under 10 pounds. Eating it gave me a whole new lease on life after a night of cramped international travel in cattle class, crammed up against the window. I don’t know if you can tell by looking how fantastic it was, but you ... [Continue Reading]

So far, 24 hours into my visit, Edinburgh feels like a teeming young person’s city. I don’t know if all the young people we see on the street are locals out for the evening or tourists from all over the world who have arrived for the theater festival. Last night we struck out around nine o’clock to explore and to find something to eat. We were armed only with a shitty tourist map and tried to pick our way to the local theatre district. We found ourselves a great local pub, The Fiddler’s Arm, just underneath Edinburgh Castle. It was just the kind of place I’d hoped for: wood walls, big wood tables, a young woman singing folk songs, a young female bartender topping off strong dark draft beers, and great pub food: in our case, beef cooked in stout with a pastry top, excellent French ... [Continue Reading]

We had a bit of a strange night last night. We had tickets to see A Winter’s Tale at the Fringe Festival. We’d scoped out the venue, gotten our tickets and showed up ten minutes before show time. The theatre, like all of Edinburgh this month, was crammed with advertisements for theatre:

During our last full day in Edinburgh, Eileene and I headed out on foot to the cemetery we’d spotted the day before, passing, on the way, all kinds of now familiar landmarks of “our” neighborhood. I love how in less than two days, we’d claimed the mile around our place as “ours.” We delighted in these familiar places: Andrew May: Wind Instrument Repairer, Double Reed Specialist; Turkish Hot Shave Barber, the blue James Morrow building, the Indian-Nepalese restaurant, the scaffolding we always walked under, the site of the fire we’d watched burn the day before (could that have just yesterday?), the cluster of strip joints shut up at 10:30 in the morning, the Bank of Scotland, a bargain store called, "Pound Stretcher," the Kama Sutra Indian restaurant, the Bottom's Up Show Bar, my personal ... [Continue Reading]

This writing retreat in Scotland came about when my former student, Robyn Randolph, emailed me from her new home in the Scottish Highlands and said, “Laura, if you ever want to teach a writing retreat here in Scotland, I’ll handle all the logistics on the ground.” That one email turned into a series of emails and Skype calls, and several months later, the Write, Travel, Transform Retreat in Scotland was born. It’s always incredible to me how an idea can actually come to fruition. This retreat will be starting in just a few days—and I really am in Scotland, a place I never would have come to without Robyn’s enticing ... [Continue Reading]

Our last night in Edinburgh, Eileene and I had met up at the Urban Angel Café with Talin Vartanian, a journalist from Toronto, who would eventually be joining us at the retreat. Over the course of a lovely meal full of great conversation, she regaled us with baggage horror stories about Ryanair, one of the small airline companies that provide cheap commuter hops throughout Europe. According to Talin, these budget airlines bring "no frills" service to a new low. They have strict rules about the size and weight of luggage—and each extra kilo is charged on a precipitously rising sliding scale. On the lowest price fares, no checked baggage is allowed; you get one small carry-on that must meet specific size and ... [Continue Reading]

Some things need to be seen and experienced to be truly felt, and Newbold House is one of them. I’d been looking at pictures of Newbold House for months, but seeing it two-dimensionally in pixels didn't compare to the visceral experience of walking inside the big front doors and feeling the grounded power of the place. Newbold House, a massive Victorian mansion, was built in 1893 for a single couple: Colonel Woodcock, a retired colonel who served in India made a fortune trading tea, and his wife. The Woodcocks traveled frequently, leaving the house to be cared for by a large team of servants, including 8 full-time gardeners, who tended the 7-acre estate. After passing into the hands of another childless couple, the house ... [Continue Reading]

On my last free afternoon before the retreat was due to begin, Eileene and I decided to hike out to the local distillery for a tour. Christopher from Newbold House gave me a long set of walking instructions that included passing over a dam without water, keeping a stream that we hardly ever saw on our right, and finding a pathway where a railroad track used to be. It was a glorious day and a wonderful walk. Here’s just some of what we saw along the way: