February 2006

The Broons and Oor Wullie are 70 on 8th March. This song is by way of a wee personal tribute…

Right, here we go with my first ever podcast! I should say right away that this is NOT the radio show and has NOTHING to do with the BBC. It has everything to do with the kind of songs you can find on my myspace site or by clicking on the ‘tom morton’s songs’ link…

…their great battle songs a-thunder on the blast!” The entry of the 2006 Northmavine Up Helly Aa Jarl Squad into the Hillswick Hall in the early hours of Saturday morning. Play the video! Just 30 seconds I'm afraid.

…if you can be bothered, check out my new myspace page which is at http://www.myspace.com/tommortonmusic. I’ll put a permanent link up over in the right hand links column in a minute. You can download or listen to four songs there. If you feel inclined, sign up as a ‘friend’. Up Helly Aa was great, by…

  It’s Up Helly Aa day in Northmavine, and the galley Hankavaar, constructed over the past two years (last year’s festival was cancelled following a local tragedy)sits sparkling in the Hillswick sunshine even as I write. Chief viking for the ‘day’ (which will last until around 8.00 am tomorrow!)is Ivor ‘Hank’ Hughson, and he will…

This is my first attempt at using audioblog.com, which should enable you to listen(scroll down to bottom of post, needs Flash plug-in, probably needs broadband) to the first fruits of my home recording endeavours with a Tascam DP-01FX and far too many guitars. This song was much performed (in a different version) when, thanks to…

  I know, there are too many pictures of St Bernards on sofas on this blog, but I couldn’t resist Lulu and Lucy in this sisterly pose. Back in Shetland, with the Northmavine Up Helly Aa on Friday, in which my daughter is a viking princess. I fear that the St Bernards, not to mention…

…a north-north-westerly of up to force 7, in fact, and as the captain of the Hrossey warned, there was “a bit of a swell”. Last night’s trip north from Aberdeen was the 14-and-a-half-hour special via Orkney, leaving Aberdeen at 5.00pm and arriving in Lerwick at 7.30am. The ferry gets into Kirkwall at around 11.30pm, which…

To Glenesk, one of the Angus Glens, one of the (no doubt many) surpassingly beautiful parts of Scotland I had never been. Until preliminary discussions began on me taking over scriptwriting duties on The Broons and Oor Wullie, and a meeting was convened with me, artist Pete Davidson (who lives in Glenesk) and DC Thomson…

It’s a pedometer thing. The deal is, apparently, that the average sedentary person takes 5000 steps a day, and that every step above 10,000 represents A Very Good Thing, burning off calories, increasing fitness, wearing out shoe polyurethane, pavements etc. My recent attempts to stave off the wear, tear and flabbiness of age include walking…