I'm writing this in May 2026, my umpteenth attempt to post since last October. On re-reading my last piece I'm struck at how ill-at-ease I seemed. This feeling, of being 'unlike me' is real. How I react to it is, I admit, a struggle about who I am and what I do these days. As I read on X recently, “I never had a career. Only work.” Lately I've come to doubt even that.

On a good day I resist this kind of lazy solipsism in a world where deeds, not words, should matter most. The wars currently being waged in the Middle East and elsewhere need no comment from me: the genocides, the broken ceasefires, the startling cruelties are heartbreaking. As for the culture wars closer to home, I hold my thoughts and prejudices to myself, not out of fear of being cancelled for some perceived apostasy, but rather, in the knowledge I was cancelled a long time ago for the crimes of being working class, female and independent-minded. ~ continue...

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Forgive my magical thinking but in storytelling the number three is said to have magic properties, a trope of folk tales such as the one I'm currently working on. Oddly it's taken three attempts to write this post, not helped by the opioid haze of the last 600 (and counting) days and an existential crisis where I try to reconcile my desire to make films with the reality. At such times I remind myself that filmmaking - the good stuff - is supposed to be hard even if it's on a spectrum ranging from 'thankless' to 'futile'.

Another reason I've avoided writing is because I don't wish to dwell on the negatives. 'Scottish film isn't the hill I'm prepared to die on,' I tell my husband. 'Hummock, more like,' he replies. He's right. I recall a conversation I once had with a writer acquaintance outside a local supermarket about the goings-on at a Scottish film awards do. I was taken aback when my companion said casually, 'Oh, and so-and-so won the keep breathing award,' referring to the recipient of a lifetime achievement honour.

I thought about this for a long time.

~ continue...

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While I look forward to screening Voyageuse in Dublin and Bristol in the coming weeks, I'm also aware – if sad – that it's probably the last time the film will appear on the big screen. I've concluded that, for the moment at least, the effort needed to promote the film is outweighed by my need to focus on a new project.

Time has a way of slipping, unannounced, into the future. This is especially true amid the current pre-Brexit uncertainty because who knows where any of us will be by April 2019? Three weeks ago, my husband, Owen signed us up for a 16-week course in German at the Goethe Institute in Glasgow. His motive, informed partly by his attempt to gain German citizenship through his maternal grandfather, he knows is well-intentioned but unlikely to succeed. The other reason for improving our German will, I hope, prove more practical in the near future.

~ continue...

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