Vonny Leclerc

MY entire life has a soundtrack. For each memory, a corresponding song. For each period of my life, a genre, artist or album providing the sonic accompaniment to the cinema in my head. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, which is only slightly less time than I’ve been playing the guitar – and why most of those songs will feature those six strings growling.

IT’S 8am on a Monday in Dalmeny. The working week looms. The weather is filthy; all drizzle and chill echoing the mood of those making their way to Edinburgh. The platform swarms with people on high alert, waiting for the familiar disembodied voice that will decide their morning’s fate. No-one speaks to one another. No-one can afford to be casual, to relax into the wait. They are primed for a singular objective: to board the train.

PERFORMERS say the rising rents will make the Edinburgh Festival elitist. The truth is it already is. Those who have lived alongside it have known this for years.

ANOTHER week, another shooting in America – and then another. First in an El Paso Walmart, and then in Dayton, Ohio, with a total of 31 people killed. There have been 61 fatalities as a result of mass shootings in 2019 alone.

EVERY now and then, I’ll come across a news story that makes me physically shudder. It should happen far more often than it does,

FOR the past three years or so, my kids and I have been engaged in a game of sorts, one that has become steadily more depressing as time has gone on. What started off as an amusing pastime got steadily more unnerving.

IT’S been a week since the BBC broadcast its explosive Panorama documentary on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. For British Jews who have been tirelessly raising the alarm about the growing frequency and flagrance of hatred, the broadcast was a moment freighted with expectation and nervousness.

PONDER this, if you will. A woman – a damsel – sits by the side of the road. Her tyre has blown, leaving her to ponder her situation in the balmy summer heat.

ONCE upon a time, before we found ourselves truly through the looking glass, a parent kissing their child would not a headline make. Though in an age of grand cinema conspiracies and Boris hair-truthers, what passes for news is far beyond the fundamentals of a journalistic education.

I’LL admit I’ve always wondered what it would be like to grow a beard. As a woman with natural follicular talent, I’d always assumed if I’d been born a guy, that I’d be rocking a particularly majestic plumage right now. While I thought it’d look great, I’ve never really experienced the social benefits of looking that manly. Sure, in my short-back-and-sides days, I got the odd “sir” from behind, but I never imagined the possibilities a little hirsutism might offer …