I could still smell bonfires in my hair.

The night before was Hogmanay, and we had trudged along the pitch of the shore drawn to lighted fires. Following music and song, we huddled around a bonfire amongst locals dancing on the sand. “We are locals too now,” my partner said. It was my first New Year’s Eve in Scotland since the millennium. The bells chimed midnight, and the tankers boomed in the Forth, lit up and sounding their horns to see in the New Year. I was so happy that I cried.