Dani Garavelli

IT WOULD make a niche Scottish parlour game: guess what “emergency” the SNP will declare next. If the criterion is crises that have peaked on their watch, then it’s a pretty large field. We’ve already ticked off “climate”, “drugs deaths” and, just last week, “housing”. How about an ambulance emergency, or a prisons emergency or a culture emergency? Or, wait, I’ve got it - a ferries emergency?

THAT Humza Yousaf messed up was a given. He admitted as much in his resignation speech when he said he had underestimated the degree of hurt his abrupt severing of the Bute House Agreement would cause the Greens.

MY sons were born travellers. That’s not a boast; it’s a fact. At home, I often struggled to get them breakfasted and out the door of a morning. After school, they’d squabble and trip each other up while I was making dinner. But put three small knapsacks on their backs, and three small caps on their three small heads, and - ta da! - we were transformed into (half of the) von Trapps ready to Climb Ev’ry Mountain.

ON THE day the Hate Crime legislation came into force, I was on Ben A’an. It was Easter Monday, so it was busier than usual, the steep paths to the summit thronged with committed trekkers, once-a-year jaunters, dog walkers, teenage boys, and dads bearing babies in backpacks.

Dani Garavelli writes about Kate Middleton and looks at how society reacted to the absence of the Princess from the public eye now that she has revealed her cancer diagnosis.

Despite being open by nature, and frequently plundering my own life for copy, I have never written about my experiences of the menopause. The reasons for this are myriad and complicated.

The production, which premieres at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in May, is not, they stress, a straightforward retelling of the events of the memoir, more an exploration of what it cost to write it, and the transformation it wrought. Though its subject matter is grim – homophobia, alcohol dependency and abuse – it will channel some of Dahl’s dark fantasy, along with the agitprop spirit of 7:84.

FOR a decision allegedly taken to protect MPs, last week’s tampering with Westminster protocol hasn’t half enabled racist rhetoric and inflamed an already-febrile atmosphere.

By Dani Garavelli

A domestic abuse survivor has called for improvements to the justice system after her ex-partner subjected her to a vicious attack which left her suffering from PTSD.