Blog - Chris Creegan

There’s only one Andy Murray

11/01/2019

If he were a football player it’s a chant you’d have heard from the terraces a thousand times over. Tennis isn’t football. Its audiences are every bit as passionate but their enthusiasm is tempered by a different culture. Yet it’s a mantra that has a certain ring to it and in one sense it’s undoubtedly […]

Shortening days, lengthening reflections — and Settling Up

15/12/2018

Just a week to go until the shortest day and winter’s beginning. Somehow, though the year stumbles on for another ten days, for me, it’s the winter solstice that marks its finale. I’m no pagan. In a fragile world, I cling onto my Christian faith, against the odds. For all the fairy lights that bedeck […]

We’ve beaten the virus — it’s time to kill the stigma

01/12/2018

Disclosures, published by Stewed Rhubarb Press, is a book of sometimes harsh contrasts. Of visibility and invisibility, silence and noise, innocence and experience, openness and closedness — despair and hope. And the contrast at its core is about shame. It is, unashamedly, a book about living with HIV in Scotland today. And yet, without the shame that […]

The Pyllon Endeavour — an unmissable story of strength and vulnerability

18/11/2018

Eight men. Twenty four hours. One hundred and ninety-two miles. If you’d been walking through an underpass, on the edge of a shopping precinct in Milngavie, just after 4.00pm on Saturday, you might have caught a glimpse of those eight men. Heads bowed, in a group hug, surrounded by a small crowd of well-wishers. A […]

Katie and William were not our children — but their tragic deaths are about us

11/11/2018

Just another Monday. Even in this increasingly dysfunctional world, we still have them. We go about our business. I’d been meeting a colleague over coffee in Edinburgh’s George Street. A cheery enough hour spent. That thing we call catching up. I couldn’t help being reminded, while the caffeine was good, the coffee bar had been […]

Whose community is it anyway?

07/11/2018

The lives of people with learning disabilities are changing. The burgeoning alumni of Scotland’s learning disability awards, since their inception in 2017, are a powerful testament to that. Along with the 2016 recipients of six lifetime RSA fellowships for people with learning disabilities in Scotland, they provide compelling evidence of the talent and potential in […]

What’s left undone — Remembering Olivia McLeod

14/09/2018

Our journey together scarcely left base camp. But the tent pegs in the ground were already secure. In the midst of an ending, we forged a new bond. Green shoots burgeoned. Abundant with hope, possibility. Stuff to talk about, things to do. Such was the thrill of my short friendship with Olivia McLeod. Facing death, […]

Building a think-tank for Scotland — with a little help from Yo-Yo Ma

09/09/2018

On Saturday 20th September 2014, my husband and I sauntered along Edinburgh’s George Street. Just two days after the independence referendum we, like many other Scots, were sweating the small stuff while occasionally pondering on the existential elephant that lumbered along beside us. We’d left the polling station having placed our crosses in different boxes. […]