C’est la vie

Marcel Proust had his madeleine in France, I have mine in Lerwick!

Falling in love with an island (or any place on Earth) will make you shift mountains and turn a dream into reality.

This certainly happened to Valérie and Didier Pîquer, today’s proud owners of C’est la vie, located in Commercial Street opposite Harry’s Department and the Fort Café (the town’s best Chippie). 

An authentic French experience guaranteed from the moment you step in. The décor, atmosphere and a welcome with a smile invite you to a very convivial establishment. Your eyes are drawn to the myriad of treasures ranging from le comptoir to the brioche and other delicacies displayed under glass bells on a table in one corner. 

Whereas Valérie comes from Paris, Didier is Basque. A magic blend that brings an amazing 3-page menu on a clipboard! There is something for everyone. 

From the famous Croque Monsieur family  to the platter of charcuterie, they offer you the best produce. Brioche, madeleines, cookies, gauffres and langues de chat are homemade. If some dishes are directly imported, Didier confided they came from the finest Basque (from either side of the Pyrénées) or French supplier – local artisans. 

Each plate feels gastronomical – each bite, an exquisite moment your senses will memorise for a very long time!

Valérie shared her deep delight as clients shared smiles and even their appreciation in French, as it feels such a heart warmer.

Although they only opened to the public on the third day of April, locals and visitors are already flocking in, sampling what C’est la vie has to offer, and the menu has so much to offer. 

It is the start of a great adventure! 

If you are a fine gastronome in search of some culinary and traditional Gallic delights, just come along and push the door. You will be in for a real treat! 

Book your table to avoid disappointment. 

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Skydiver

Six wonderful days in the great Scottish city of culture. 

Reconvening with friends, meeting old and new ones – treading on flagstones and cobbles uncharted till then…

Book launch, Open Mic’ reading… Now Compass Head introduced, well received and since well shelved in Renfrew Street. 

With gracious thanks to Christie Williamson and Hazel Frew for rolling the ball, Chris Tait for a great crack, Basil for homing the verse at tell it slant and orchestrating that marvellous night at the Project Café, and to E for being here all along. 

So lovely to meet up with Elizabeth Rimmer at the Clutha Bar for Jim Ferguson’s book launch and blending with Glasgow poets that same night.
So chuffed to share such precious slices of life with precious friends. 

Felt so welcomed at the Project Café as well as any public place treaded into. Glasgow shines through the folk who make the place!

Till my next visit, Sláinte, Glesga! 

#worldpoetryday

With the Vernal Equinox, that sense of joy and revival, as Mother Earth awakes and grows deep in her bounty and belly, comes an invitation to create, celebrate, as today, Wednesday 21st of the third month, was chosen as our World Poetry Day. 

The chance to reconnect with ourselves as Mother Earth’s children, and allow creativity to flow like sap inside our souls.

It is exactly what happened this morning during Period 3 in the classroom with Fourth Year pupils who wished to practise their own creative writing skills through poetry. 

They asked me for the first theme, whilst they picked the second.

They sat down inside our world, and, with a few words of guidance, began to write their poetics. Not only happy to hint them into using their own senses, they asked me, the poet, to write my own.

Theme 1

The Rain

It drips and clops like

a metronome against time,

Clop, clop, clop, clop… 

that sense of Spring past Equinox, as they lash into their 

trillions, clones,

cold water unleashed from clouds;

aborted, unborn icicles,

unwanted so late inside March.

I hear them crash against windows, on every corner of

meadows, and feel them

drop inside the

warmth of my collar, as 

morning vanishes in

vain.

——–

Theme 2: 

The Beach

There isn’t a pebble in sight,

heart-shaped, 

polished by angry tides, 

riptides and rollers 

rolled in wrath

a jealous moon pulled & twisted.

But there are prints from

our own past, 

hundred of footprints in white sand

a gale will blow, obliterate through

hands of time, like

a school slate wiped by a child,

timetables & mathematics in

an attempt to unwind 

Pi.
NH 2018

————-

Now your turn to be creative and celebrate the spoken word on this fine day! 🙂 

echoes

   

 When you are passionate about something, you voice it.

It is exactly what I penned – a poem – inspired by a History lesson yesterday- a reminder of how folk can be treated, and wondered why a great democracy like the US is still treating some of her people the very same way it did in the 1830s… Canada has led the way with her First Nations. Then, in 2009, President B. Obama made an apology via a Bill. A step forward, even though footsteps got lost inside politics… As history obeys circles.

Trail of Tears

Featured Image:  Cherokee Indians are forced from their homelands during the 1830’s. (Credit: Alamy)

America was built this way…
Native folk pushed by aliens in the name of money…

Trail of Tears

Rounded at gun point to force you…
Walk through the path of
the un-
known, un-
wanted, un-
humane
track,
as
others
needed your
home, land to grow cotton and
make their
gold off
what they felt
lushest of
earth.
So
they
pushed you away from
your ancestral ground, where
you,
the one who
occupied
this land;
and
made you walk across meadows, mountains and snow that
lied
across
others’ nations, on the other
side of
the
gigantic river, where
Sitting Bull,
Red Cloud and
Crazy Horse
lived by…
For every four, one of you
died.

© Nat Hall

2018

Yule and now Hogmanay behind us.

The tidal loch remains frozen at Wadbister on New Year’s Day, and it may well stay in this state for a while…

Wadbister is the place where I buried 2017 with good friends & two of their neighbours. I woke up this late morning and breakfasted with my hosts, Sharon and Andy, looking at a brand new sky. Blue, serene, by a garden and bay that homes a wonderful wildlife. If I missed the otter, I was blessed with my first avian visitors – starling, blackbird, sparrow and robin – when an unusual visitor (to our latitude here anyway!) graced the garden, a great tit. What a grand start to the primal day of the year! 

By the time I left my friends’ home, a West wind was recolouring the heavens, as light rain showers began to christen the land… 

2017

A year of contrasts – a tale of two halves, with its kaleidoscope of emotions – that took my heart across headlands, bays, the English Channel and the North Sea. 

A creative year, as it has anchored my pen into this second collection of poetry in the making… Writing on both sides of the North Sea, with a fabulous return to West Norwegian shores last September.  

And our descent to Yule marked by the shifting of our AHS to its new 21st building at Lochside, which proved an extraordinary exercise. 

Yet October was graced by extraordinary moments, reunions and meetings that began to pave my way into 2018. For this, I feel humble, blessed and grateful to 2017. 

Christie Williamson and Hazel Frew, see you both in your great Celtic town in April! 

November also graced by new humane and creative connections thanks to friend and poetess Choman Hardi, who made me discover Barbara Cumbers, a kindred spirit based in London, and regular visitor to Shetland. Magic slices of life shared since, including two readings at the Book Fest and in Scalloway. 

December crowned by many smiles

The joy of reaching Yule marked with many delights – a poet’s working blurb published in Shetland Life, a poem inside the Yule Issue of the New Shetlander. 

The island clad by sun and snow on the eve of a well deserved break. 

A peaceful end to a year that felt a real roller coaster, and as the twelfth month was about to draw to an end, a brand new project now at my writer’s table in the translation of a manuscript. Wonderful challenge and task that began on the Eve of Hogmanay.

So,

Thank you, 2017, for your joys and tears, harvest of adventures, new friends across headlands and seas.

Today, on the primal day of the year, there burns a fire in my heart, like a beacon for the twelve months ahead.

Hello, 2018. Let me welcome you with fresh eyes, a shameless smile, heart filled with hopes.

The road ahead feels both very exciting and promising.

A very happy new year to you all, wherever you walk on this amazing planet. May 2018 grant you good health and happiness.

go hálainn (#wearewoman 5)

We are woman, we are beautiful

When it comes to Irishness, the world is our oyster. So many magical voices, celebrated throughout the world. The ones you know are household names… And the list is by no means exhaustive. I could have selected a few that have really struck chords in my heart; but, there is one, one, anonymous, living and breathing by River Lagan, who devotes her time and care to vulnerable people, hence double-touched my heart.

Don’t ask me for a photograph, as I have yet to immortalise her smile, and, light in her eyes. Her name too remains anonymous, for it is wished this way.

So, for you, beautiful Irish one,

a first poem.

 

Homebird

 

Every rose hip has a meaning.

 

Of all the dreamers in

the world,

your

walled garden

has always been your sanctuary,

fog lit at night,

the orange

glow

I sometimes see here

inside mine…

The firecrest deep in your eyes.

In between lush and

Irish sky,

every

morning has a meaning, like

a tattoo on shoulder

blades; and

you wander between feeders;

behind the back of every leaf, there is a heart

ready to pounce, between

the rose and the

fuschia.

 

NH 2017

Lovers’ Loan

 Our school flag shines inside a gale, as we are about to abandon the Old AHS for brand new walls at Clickimin….

This morning, one single thought dawned on me: our final day with our pupils at our familiar street address, Lovers’ Loan.

I share a common blend of feelings, like so many of us – torn with leaving a great headland and the Old Institute Sir Arthur Anderson had built in the name of education (1862) and shifting into a state of the art 21st century building.

To mark such move, I penned a piece now with the New Shetlander for a future issue.

Cheerio, Lovers’ Loan

We pile boxes upon boxes, whilst our

sky 

lashes tears in rain – 

for this last 

day,

bairns fill corridors with voices only 

a ghoul 

will

memorise…

The green and gold of our

old flag

flap

in

a

gale 

we cannot stop.

Speckled swaabies in search of toast some pupil

parted on

wet grass –

they know the restaurant

will close, 

watch silhouettes behind

lit glass. 

October signals 

departure from granite walls,

shiny square slates…

Our final day at Lovers Loan 

wi bairns

an aa.
Lerwick, Old AHS, 4 Oct 2017

I will miss our “Hogwarts”.

From one era into the next.