Author Archives: litadoolan

Success with Scrivener

  I visited a number of gardens this year that touched my soul and I wanted to collect the stories in a small book people could download. Hey Presto – having put together a draft that looked good I searched for the big button that would instantly upload it to the web. That was 2 […]
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Dilston Physic Garden Daylight

  This post is inspired by “Nighthawks” where a silence creates a form of communication between distinct individuals who have their own culture but come together to create a new language. Plants with medicinal properties were grown at Dilston Hall that stood near this site on the River Tyne in medieval times. In the early 16th […]
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Taurus of Bologna Botanic Garden

    There is modern art around the roads leading in towards the city that has a humour. Raphael the artist grew up here and the contrasts in the way the land is segmented into wedges of valleys above lush thriving lines of vegetation betray the structures in his composition. There is form in the […]
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Provands Lordship

  Standing in the space of the oldest house in Glasgow, founded in 1471, shows me what is possible when you build something with purpose; it out lasts change. The top floor of the house in Glasgow originally used by both church and hospital has a wooden bench by a window that looks onto the […]
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how to make theatre absurd

  It’s a familiar question.   Tell us a story when you were going about your own business and something completely ridiculous or inexplicable happened. What did you do? I walked into a familiar space with a ticket to a secret show.  The new fashion across our local theatres is to serve up a play […]
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The Joy of St Peter’s

  First, a warning: A lot of what you read here may surprise you. On the surface, it sounds unbelievable. How could something so traditional as a historic church surprise anyone? It is easy to walk by, you know the scenario. A show with heavy marketing, laden down with posters, guided me South. Especially during […]
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Don’t fall… jump into love!

Thomas Dawkins sparkles as Jack, the hero in this Oscar Wilde adaptation, and tops and tails the show doubling as a young writer in search of his sidekick. In both future and past scenarios he finds a muse in the steadfast gaze of Cassandra Foster who plays an assured Gwendolen. Pamela Schermann’s direction presents a […]
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Court fixing up the past

Looking back at my annual August visits to Edinburgh Festival Venue brings alive the stories of a medieval building.   George Riddell changed the front of a building at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile in 1726 and took a step forward for the Scottish Enlightenment. Scotland’s Union with England in 1707 meant the end of the […]
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Bessa Can’t Dance

  This is part of a novel I am slowly working on that reflects the theme of ‘honey and vinegar’, and looks at the role of kindness from others in building a life.     Her parents had such a lust for life no one was around to pick her up from dance lessons or […]
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Around the Mound

Overheard from a window opening onto Edinburgh Fringe… Debbie did something amazing yesterday and the pain went away.  We be both cried. -How are you feeling? Me? -I feel like I want to tell you all my problems Why? -After you said what you did by trade I am not a practicing therapist though -Who are […]
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