Perhaps a third on the phases of the moon and the patterns her life has taken. Another about the addictive speed of Internet-age existence versus the ancient ways of Orkney. One on the urban wildlife of Berlin (goshawks and raccoons) and her own feral search for love in a mid-30s gap year. (2.5) Liptrot had the makings of a few great personal essays here – had the material been honed.

This and the natural world that she uses to orient herself here, tracking the raptors and the scavengers in the liminal urban spaces, become a metaphor of what she is doing for and to herself in a wider sense. How do you fit sobriety into a life that was largely built around the anaesthetising effects of alcohol? How do you connect to people without that buffering layer between you and the world? How do you navigate the pain of love and loss unmedicated? How do you know when your behaviours are healthy or dangerous when you're starting all over again? It is apt that she chose to do this in a city where she could not speak the language. This is rooted in day to day, pragmatic reality. She writes with such vulnerability and realness about loneliness, rootlessness and attempting to become yourself. I find her writing so interesting because she writes so matter of factly about things which largely go unsaid by most people. Unlike London, which was her home for many years, nobody in Berlin knows her, so she can start again with a clean state and begin to figure out how to reintegrate back into urban life, and whether she even wants to. In The Instant, we accompany her to Berlin, a city in which she attempts to put into practice everything she has learned getting sober. The Outrun is about Liptrot's journey to sobriety and home to Orkney where she reconnects with the natural world, where she finds peace and meaning.

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