October 2004

Tatties and Point for lunch, a massive chili-cheese-baked potato (healthy) followed by a Twix (unhealthy) and a Diet Coke (neutral). I now feel strangely bloated, like John Hurt in Alien, just at the point when his character was thinking: some Milk of Magnesia should sort this out… There was a time here in Shetland when…

“Hear it howlin’ around my kitchen door…” …or in this case, the door of the BBC studios in Lerwick. A really nasty day, thick with grey soupy rain, all of which is moving fast, if somewhat lumpily. Winter is here. Still, the weekend was autumnally beautiful, as can happen in Shetland. Saturday, James and me…

I have a friend who works in a hotel, and his job involves being nice to people, polite, offering good service, even when he doesn’t remotely feel like it. The weird thing about what I do – broadcasting, or to be precise, talking between records – is that most of the time, when I feel…

I’ve downloaded various training plans for marathons, half-marathons, 10-Ks and the like, and the first week is always a doddle. Or it reads that way, until someone as sedentary as myself starts trying to jog for 15 minutes. Good grief. I’ve spent most of life trying to avoid pain, and suddenly, here I am deliberately…

The news that the alpine monks of the St Bernard’s Pass are selling off their biggest, furriest, most slobbery assets http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3726670.stm has largely passed Lulu and Lucy, our two St Bernard sisters (not nuns, dogs) by. They remain more concerned with eating (almost anything, though Lucy for some reasons detests eggs) barking at anyone who…

There’s some trouble I’ve been having I can’t spell Bunnahabbhain And I keep saying GlenmorANGIE, which is wrong. It’s GlenMORangie I know But my brain is running slow I’ve been thinking about drinking far too long. I’ve drunk Talisker in New Orleans And Jack Daniels in Skye I’ve mixed my Glenfiddich with Irn Bru I’ve…

It’s been a gloriously velocipedal week, all spokes and derailleurs…The poor old Edinburgh Courier nine-speed has been lying, burst of back tyre, for almost six weeks, chained and so undesirable that alone out of the four bikes regularly left in its repository, it has remained unstolen. I spent Sunday afternoon oiling, repairing, messing with inner…

Songwriting has taken a bit of a back seat lately…but things are changing… Presbyterian kisses Mary had a ten grand Cartier watch She kept it under her bed It was a present from her late ex husband Before he was dead Ronnie was somewhat greasy But he met a dreadful fate Burned to death in…