100 Love Stories
100 Love Stories was born from a desire to connect with people after the pandemic. I asked the simple question “what, or who, or where, do you love?”
Hannah
“This story is about my Dad. He’s such a wonderful giving person. He didn’t grow up in a happy stable home, he didn’t experience a lot of love as a kid. But I think as a reaction to that him and my Mum were really focused on letting my brother and I know that they wouldhelp us with whatever we needed. An example of that was when that I was a kid I hated sleepovers, absolutely hated them; I was terrified. I ended up going home most sleepovers – I loved it until bedtime and then I wanted to be home and in my own bed. Which is funny because I now live on the other side of the world. At the time, I was such a homebody. So I went over to my Aunt’s house who lived three hours away and it was this big thing, I was there with my cousin and I was probably about 8; it was this big girl sleepover. Then bedtime came along and I called my Dad crying. I said ‘Dad I want to come home’ and he said ‘day or night whenever you need me, if you want me to come I’ll come. You’ll probably be asleep when I come but I’ll come’. Having fallen asleep, I came downstairs in the morning, and Dad was there at the kitchen table waiting for me”
Jenni
“My love story is about creativity and drawings and being a massive nerd. Maybe it’s a bit lame but I wanted to say I that ‘I love drawing’ and I couldn’t think of anything that was more accurate. It made me think of when I was first at Craft Scotland and I would watch the people who were making all the things with such enthusiasm and passion and I was like “This. This is what I want to do. I just want to be involved in making a thing that makes me SO excited’.
Howie
“Over the last year something I’ve really fallen in love with is nature. I started appreciating itin a way I never really have. We were all so disconnected from human interaction and what Idid to combat that was turn to nature; I would go on these long walks. Luckily I live very close to some woods and I would just go out and pick flowers, all kinds, trying to find out thedifferent species or what plants they belonged to. I would pick them and bring them back to my home and just looking at them every morning, and having that natural fragrance around me gave me a sense of calm”
Cat
“There is a person that I love; Harris, my partner. We’ve known each other for 16 years, and we’ve been together for almost 12 years. A massive part of our relationship has been long distance where we were close, but since coming back to set up our business – we used to live abroad - we’ve been day-to-day completely on the same timetable; he is a very integrated part of my life.Looking back on the years we’ve had together and the fact that we’ve gone through different waves where we’ve lived in three different countries together; where we made changes and decisions to live in those countries together each time, is something I believe has made us more robust and moreadaptable as a team and as a unit together. I feel quite proud of what we’ve build together in our relationship and also of the things we’ve built together outside of our relationship as well. So I feel I would choose him as my love story”
Laura
“I don’t feel like I have this massive ability to love. Everybody else has passions, or relationships with other people and get really into them. Maybe it’s because we over accentuatepassion; we talk about it, read about it, watch it in movies and it makes me wonder ‘Well, what is my passion? What do I actually love?’. I don’t feel like I have this grappling pressure of love that everyone talks about. I’d love a passion, I get jealous of other folk’s passions. But what I dotalk most about is my dog. So he must be the thing I care about the most. I do love him. I have this sense of need to want to protect him; that’s more accurate than love. Maybe that is love? He’s like my little shadow, my constant companion. He equally irritates me as much as he brings me joy. He’s got his own personality; he’s stubborn and clever”
Alan
“We moved to Peebles in the mid 1980s, just about the time that mountain bikes were being first developed. Our first bikes were a couple of no suspension solid fork state of the art at the time – look at them now? Blimey. Bit dodgy. We did a triathlon on them, turned up and everybody laughed at us. Anyway, move forward a few years, Glentress, near where live, is one of the biggest trail centres in Scotland. We’ve got better bikes, we’ve got suspension, we’ve got improved geometry so they go downhill and look after you a bit better. It’s just the most fun you can have on two wheels. There is no bad day to go mountain biking, even when it’s throwing it down with rain or blowing a hooley – you always come back with a smile on your face. Invariably a smile that’s covered in mud. That’s why I love mountain biking”