Dew gleaming on cold, lichen-encrusted stone, beading on grey-green strands. The white, almost crooked mass of Traquair House frames the view beyond a wine-glass lawn populated only by nocturnal moles, mounding.

As I look skywards, neck craning, a sense of spinning, imbalance, as if I too am rotating around the North Star. Whirling like a dervish wearing a white nightie. Or Wee Willie Winkie freezing his bollocks off in the frost.

Breathing in the smell of frozen, fresh earth, silage and the friendly, misting breath of pensive cattle.

The taste of a hip-flask mouthful of whisky to keep the cylinders firing throughout this midnight walk, and the touch of your hand, cramped, gloveless into my coat pocket, while the outsiders fend for themselves.

Sometimes when we touch, wondering if both have the same sense of energetic presence, or does that exist only in my flesh or mind, or experienced entirely separately and differently? In the teen years, how much of that experience was actually hyperventilation, or even cramp?

And yet, states of relaxation flow and perhaps exchange and synchronise.

The road occasionally hums, as headlights veer side to side, illuminating valley slopes and woodlands, dipping as cars approach head to head.