February 2007

  • On starting up a motorbike…

    The BMW is being shipped south on Friday, marking, I think, the end of my motorcycling career. Then again, maybe not. My friend Dave is allegedly getting a new Ducati, and he’s a decade older than me… Today I tried starting up the Big Blue Beast that is my R80/7, and after a bit of…

  • Guilt-ridden bashing of someone’s car door

    Hell’s teeth! The rush south to Sumburgh Airport on Friday night, amidst terrible weather, saw the Berlingo door thud into driver’s door of a Volkswagen Golf (or it might have been a Polo), having been whipped out my hand by a gust of wind. Damage was done. None to the Berlingo, oddly. Vorsprung Durch Edith…

  • Have a look…

    …at the new posting on my whisky blog, here.It’s called Nippy Sweeties: Tom Morton’s whisky musings, and its URL ishttp://nippysweeties.blogspot.com

  • What we talk about when we talk about whisky

    (Mirrored from the new blog Nippy Sweeties: Tom Morton’s whisky musings) You see, that’s my problem. It’s partly what drove me away from the otherwise hugely attractive world of malt whisky: The sense that I was drowning in adjectives, metaphors, similes and, latterly, numbers. I felt the same way I did when people started writing…

  • Home again briefly, and that Hold Steady gig

    Where did last week go? Good grief, it was Up Helly Aa on Friday (Northmavine version) and I haven’t had a chance to get the pictures online, or even think about blogging. We had friends to stay, including the indefatigable Daniel, one of the easiest house guests ever. I’ll get to that eventually. Possibly tomorrow.…

  • The New Model Inverness and lots of whisky

    I can’t believe that the old Highlands and Islands Development Board/Highlands and Islands Enterprise HQ in Inverness has been converted into luxury flats. But my eyes were not deceiving me yesterday morning: there you have it, proof positive that half of the reason for me using the phrase ‘Cumbernauld in a Kilt’ all those years…

  • Aberdeen again and a bad Bangladeshi fish

    Bumpy flight into Castle Greyskull but it could have been worse. We could have crashed, for example. Or disappeared into the Orkney Triangle.Very peculiar meal in Cinnamon, reputedly the city’s best Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurant. Ordered Bangladeshi fish curry as this is one of Europe’s top fishing ports. If you can’t get fresh fish in Aberdeen… But…

  • Three days of glorious snowiness

    Since the first snow fell in the early hours of Wednesday (or was it Tuesday? I have entered a dream-like Narnian state) the weather has essentially been bright, crisp, cold and sunny. Shetland at its most beautiful. The word for the weekend, though is ‘wind’, and if it snows again, we could be in for…

  • Snow! Darkness!

    It’s the special silence you get with slow snowflakes in the darkness. And we were lucky, I suppose, on Tuesday night with the absolute lack of wind. It’s classic coorie-in weather, a time for lighting the Rayburn and the open fire in the lounge, for sipping Talisker as the fragrance of burning peat fills the…

  • My new bicycle! It folds up!

    Bicycles! They’re great! I used to have two in Aberdeen for my regular sojourns there, but they both got nicked from the BBC’s supposedly secure bike park (not only that, but not a single person who works at the Beeb in Aberdeen noticed they’d gone; or the freshly-sawn chains lying on the ground). I still…