Susan Dalgety

I have no idea how Dusty, our cat, sees the world. She was re-homed three years ago, at the age of eight. Which is pretty old for a cat to be plucked from her favourite lap (my husband’s) and plonked down on a stranger’s knee. We thought long and hard before giving her up for […]

I have always written. I composed my first (and my last) poem when I was six. It was about a stone with a hole. I was very proud of it, but quickly bored of poetry. I then began filling red Silvine notebooks with stories of rabbits, princesses and other fairy tales to amuse my younger […]

It is amazing what you find when you are not looking for it. My husband Nigel is a Stoke boy, born and brought up in Tunstall. The city was once the centre of working class creativity in the UK, a place where men and women created things of great beauty from the clay beneath their […]

In a few hours time US citizens will decide choose their next President. The polls are very close, but the momentum, I hope and believe, is with Barack Obama. There has been a lot of nonsense spoken about President Obama’s record in his first term, and not just by the right. But let’s remember for […]

Four days to go and we will spend them helping to get the vote out for Barack Obama in Hellertown, PA. I was asked the other day by @PeatWarrior whether people reacted adversely to a Scot canvassing in a US election. I can truly say that both in 2008 and now I have been greeted […]

Our first morning in Bethlehem PA, volunteering for Obama 12. Some people might think it a bit strange that we have travelled thousands of miles, used up our holiday allocation and blown our (meagre) savings (again) to work in an election where we don’t even have a vote. But the choice of who will be […]

Last week I spoke at a British Council conference in Istanbul where I met some amazing women – and men – from Arab Spring countries. We spent three days talking about gender, politics, democracy and the media, with the occasional discussion about cakes, clothes and children. I am still considering all I learned – and […]