Date Published: 21st July 2026
The Positive Distraction Podcast with Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith today offers an insight into the making of his new podcast, The Positive Distraction:
I recorded this first instalment of short stories this past spring, when we were waiting in Edinburgh for the first signs of summer. Now, at last, all is ready for the launch of the podcast series – and it gives me such pleasure to invite you to listen to what is to come. The stories are very varied. I wrote a few of them some time ago – others more recently. Most of them have not been published before, so I suspect you will not have come across any of them.
I very much enjoy writing short stories. The pleasure exists in the potential that the form has to create a whole world within a few pages – sometimes within a few paragraphs. You do not necessarily need much space for a character come to life or for a place to appear in the mind’s eye. Another appealing feature of the short story is that it can surprise you. Things can happen in a short story that are more difficult to portray in a novel, where a longer narrative has to be sustained. A short story is like a snippet of conversation in which topics crop up and may then disappear rather quickly. A short story, then, may be a snapshot – a vignette.
Round about the time I recorded these stories, I wrote the poem below:
Sunny afternoon, Edinburgh
Alexander McCall Smith, July 2026
To sit half in the sun like this
Is easy enough; my study windows
Look west, towards Glasgow, far enough away
To be an adventure when I visit.
About me, piles of books await their shelves,
Who doesn’t have problems in finding
A home for the books he will never read
But intends to tackle later in the year,
Because there is always a month
In the second half of tomorrow
When the intellectual ambitions of today
May be at least partly achieved?
Each of these volumes is a few years
Of somebody’s life; long months in libraries
Or the result, perhaps, of being somewhere
Where something important happened.
Outside the window, spring struggles
To prove its point; blossom takes a risk:
Appear too early and a late frost
Will make a nonsense of your plans.
What of all this is permanent?
Nothing: we are the temporary tenants
Of a world of which the landlord
Sometimes seems absent; our lease
Is brief in its duration, its terms
Are not too onerous, though:
Try not to destroy the subjects,
And do the necessary maintenance.
The world is composed of beauty; I strain to hear
A bird on a bough outside, a breath of wind;
I move my arm the better to feel the sun,
I close my eyes and think of Scotland.
Find The Positive Distraction wherever you listen to podcasts or follow any of the links here.