I’m in love with autumn in Scotland — it’s like a childhood sweetheart I’ll never shake. Watching the leaves fall, mimicking the snowflakes that will come later, seemingly from the heavens. The soft switching of the colours, so hard to spot until the trees and hills are full-blown brown. The movement of the wildlife, the…

So that’s it. Normality has resumed in a fatigued haze of awful 6am alarms, bleak breakfasts and caffeine-fuelled to do lists. But let’s just rewind right back to the start — of the new year at least — when time was slower and the only thing on my mind was where my next post-Christmas mince…

I’ve felt prematurely festive this year and, until last weekend, I blamed it all on Edinburgh. It’s tricky to keep those love-hate Christmas songs out of your head when the Street of Light is on your doorstep! Yet although Scotland’s capital is the cliché Christmas city with its European-esque market, to get the real spirit of Scotland…