March 2005

…and this is the Barn of Bannocks earlier today, which by the way is absolutely gorgeous. A touch chilly, and getting windier (not so good as I have to get the boat south tonight) but bright in that awesome way you only get in Shetland during spring. I went for a walk along the Eshaness…

This is the interior of the Barn of Bannocks, in the garden of my house in Shetland, from where the Tom Morton Show (www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland) is broadcast nationally, internationally and cybernautically. I’ve just acquired some digital gear which came from a redundant independent TV studio, and the sound quality is now (I think) indistinguishable from ‘proper’…

A fine day on the Hillswick Ness, looking north over to Eshaness, with our house looming whitely. The winter darkness is now officially receding. Roll on the ‘simmer dim’! 

Perhaps telling my wife that possessing a new guitar was like “having a new woman in your life” wasn’t particularly wise. She took it well, though. And the arrival of my new Moon 0003 ( http://www.moonguitars.co.uk/ )has caused little domestic trauma.But then, I did pay for it by selling (count them) three other guitars on…

The oven on our gas cooker stopped functioning recently, necessitating the return to service of the trusty, somewhat rusty peat-fired Rayburn, once the sole means of heating and cooking in the manse, now a fallback option for those times when more modern technologies fail. A recent absence of central heating oil (during which I seriously…