Simonside Self Catering Apartment

01/08/2026

25/06/2026

Jim has contributed to a new three-part Channel 4 documentary series, Free Nelson Mandela.

Directed by James Rogan, the series features interviews with Mandela’s family and key figures from his life, alongside artists including Peter Gabriel, Bono, and Jerry Dammers. It tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s journey from activist to political prisoner, and the global movement and musical activism that helped secure his freedom.

If you're in the UK, you can watch the full documentary on Channel 4 via the link below.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/free-nelson-mandela

09/05/2026

Awning removed, the end days 2006

09/05/2026

WILDFLOWERS
Laughing at things that might otherwise bring tears gradually became my default position in life. It’s a trait I may well have inherited.
My father certainly knew how to laugh at - and with - everyone. Jesus, he even had his oncology specialist chuckling minutes after telling him he might not live to see the end of the summer.
“Ah well,” he said, teasing the doctor, with whom he’d struck up a friendship. “I might still see Celtic win the league. Due any day now." He then glanced at me. "So when are Simple Minds playing again?"
On that drive home years ago, I waited for something more. A glimpse of what he really felt behind the humour. But he said nothing about the diagnosis.
Instead, he was intent on us first getting to Pollok Park in time for his favourite tearoom, worried more than anything they might run out of the scones he liked. But it wasn’t until later that evening that he finally acknowledged it. Looking up from his book, he paused, and sighed.
“Any chance we could fly to Sicily in the next few days? Spring is my favourite time. The hills above Taormina will be covered in wildflowers. I’d like to see that again. And I’d like to say goodbye to my friends.”
Just last night, I walked those same hills, surrounded by wildflowers. It's still the place I go when I need to step away from the noise of the world. I of course thought about how much Sicily meant to him. And to my grandfather before him.
And how, in the end, the love of the Sicilian landscape came to mean the same to me.

Jim Kerr. Hotel Villa Angela. Taormina. Sicily.

09/05/2026

Hello. I’ll stop now. Hope your day is good.

02/04/2026

Autographed copy of The Lodger. Burroughs, in a 1974 Rolling Stone interview with Bowie, stated, “The revolution will come from ignoring the others out of existence”.

02/04/2026

Duke takes in history and culture on visit to north Northumberland

02/04/2026

‘Flora and Persephone
Greet her with magnolia
Lilac and forsythia
Bounties from Ostara’

The Goddess Sophia Halberstam Sophia Hz embraces all the fineries of Spring!

Words and music to April: Katharine Blake from our album ‘The Spinning Wheel’ available here:

https://mediaevalbaebes.bandcamp.com/merch

📸 Ashley Jones