July 2007

Whew! I am now a fully-registered member of St Andrews Library, enabling me to use one of their computers to surf and check out the blogging, email and Facebook turf. My Nokia 9300i is OK for checking email but the business of micro-mailing is just too much for my enormous fingers… It’s a glorious day…

excuse brevity, i'm doing this on a mobile phone…folding bikes arenot much fun on trains…in st andrews, surrounded by pastelpringle…grreat steaks and cheap beer…anyone would think there wasa university here…

It's£4.10 for a pint at the Marine Hotel in North Berwick!

Last week of broadcasting before I have four weeks off, and it’s a humdinger: Tom’s Folding Tour (why did I suggest this?) involves five outside broadcasts, using satellite, with live music and other guests. Thing is, I will be travelling by folding bike (the Downtube FS IX, see below) train, bus, foot and, quite possibly,…

Jakob Nielsen is the world’s pre-eminent thinker on how the internet works, and ought to work better. He is ahead of the loop. This article made me feel rather ill. What, then, is the point?

In Thurso, apparently. But how? K Thomson took this snap in the course of his bespoke tour leading operations.

…Louise Tickle has just texted me to say that a profile she wrote of me for The Guardian’s Work section is published today. Don’t think it’s available online. Off to T. Weather seems to have improved, he said cautiously.

Under strict instructions from Martha to obtain wellies that were ‘interesting’, ie not green or black, I finally tracked down a pair of purple striped ones in Clydebank this morning. I picked up a golfing umbrella but all attempts to hire a 4X4 (except for an offer of a Volvo XC70, which is too posy…

…leafy beyond belief, at least to someone living in the (mainly) treeless Zetlandics. Great to see the BBC’s Alan Johnston back among us…far be it from me to betray my own obsession with hair and the loss of it, but it was fascinating how concerned he was about getting a haircut. That William Hague post-karate/Trainspotting…