Today is officially the most depressing day of the year. I think the fact that someone has actually taken time out of his life to work that one out should be enough to make everyone smile.
So what if all your New Year’s resolutions have been washed down the gutter with the rain, you can always make some more next week when you’re feeling more optimistic. I have found no matter how bad things become in life there is always someone else who needs cheering up more.
Outside there is a cracking full moon and the nights are getting lighter, buds are forcing there way through the soaking ground. It will soon be spring and time to plant the sunflower seeds.
Fifty First Timer No.3 I made and drank my first pinacolada
We had friends over for dinner on Friday night and because the days are long and the weather dire I thought we needed a cheer up. I concocted a Caribbean dinner menu from my Australian Woman’s Weekly Caribbean Cookbook.
We don’t normally drink rum but a Trinidadian friend brought us some back the last time she was home and this seemed like the perfect excuse.
Menu
Pinacollada aperitifs Callaloo (a spinach and crab meat soup) served with homemade oat and maple bread Chicken, rice and chickpea with mango and avocado salsa Grilled mango cheeks
Served with lots of calypso music; and burned off with loads of singing and dancing and in the morning mucho sore heads. Great fun!
Free competitions and heaps of inspiration from the fabulous pieces of work submitted from around the world, although at the moment it seems to lean towards Australian artists. It is a fantastic opportunity to be part of a community of like minded artists
Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021.
In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies.
Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography.
Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.
View all posts by Moira Mcpartlin
www.moiramcpartlin.com 
MoiraThanks for cheering me up.Colin
LikeLike
MoiraThanks for cheering me up.Colin
LikeLike