During the week a package arrived for me from the United Kingdom. In the upper right hand corner was a stamp with a picture of Edinburgh Castle. My mother assumed that meant the package was from Scotland, but it was from somewhere south and west and by the sea. Mothers can be wrong, though they admit that infrequently. I have my own picture of the castle. When I visited Endinburgh in December I sat in the park below the castle. I took out of my bag my black blank book and my felt-tipped pen. The drawing became more of the castle wall and the hill, due to the size limitations of the page. Think of cross-hatched blacks lines loosely composed into the idea of a mass of rocks and the idea of a streak of a wall cutting across that, and you nearly have the drawing of mine. Holiday shoppers walked past me as I sat on the bench and drew; I noticed how they tried to look over my shoulder without my noticing--but they did not do a good job at that feat. My hands became numb from the cold. This morning I showed my father my drawing and the stamp; he told me that it looked great. I can never tell if he is lying or not. Unlike him, I do not take to the pushing of lines across a page; I push words around the page instead. Trapped on the train back to London from Edinburgh, I listened to my cassette of _Tigermilk_. From the window I saw mountains, the sea, and occasionally history's relic of a castle or an abbey. I wanted to know if being in Scotland enhanced listening to Belle and Sebastian, but it does not. Whatever those songs are about is all the world over. Living and loving Matthew ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave -----------------------------------------------------------------------