I've been thinking about what we win and what we lose when we allow AI into our writing space. It's a thorny topic. When I was doing my celebrant training, we may as well have been asked to sign an oath in blood: thou shalt not use AI to write ceremonies. The underlying message was clear enough: this work is meant to be authored, not assembled. I took that steer seriously. It wasn't hard: I love writing, and I'm certainly not ready to hand over all the fun to an algorithm. A

There was a time when humans believed that everything revolved around the Earth. The sun, the moon, the stars, all orbiting dutifully around us like very obedient wedding guests. Then along came Nicolaus Copernicus, and he really upset the apple cart by pointing out that, actually, we’re not the centre of the universe at all. Which, if you think about it, is both humbling and slightly inconvenient. Ever since the Copernican Revolution, we’ve had to accept that we are just one

Journalist and broadcaster Bibi Lynch recently published an article taking stock of her life after she turned 60 - a bit of midlife reflection, if you like. She had no partner. No children. No home of her own. “On paper,” she wrote, “it might look like a failure.” And I felt a flutter of something like anxiety ripple across my stomach. Not because her life is a failure, but because so many of us carry around an invisible piece of paper like that. A quiet ledger of how we th

If you’ve just started planning a wedding and you’re feeling overwhelmed by the list of Things You Apparently Should Already Know, let me take one off your plate. The difference between a registrar and a Humanist Society Scotland celebrant? It’s a biggie - and it’s not just about who gets to sign the paperwork. Let’s break it down. The Legal Bit Registrars are employed by the local council. They’re the official record-keepers, the government representatives: they manage the a