December 2007

  • Pre-dawn Aberdeen, and Out of Doors with a working Berlingo

    Off the boat and at the BBC in Aberdeen by 7.05 am. groggily aware that two people seem to be wandering about the car park with microphones. Good grief, it’s Ewen and Mark from Out of Doors. Heavens, they actually broadcast the show out…of doors! Next minute I’m sort of on the show, which is…

  • Four Scottish albums…and two Australian ones…and thank God Christmas is over

    There’s turkey in the fridge, still…but it’s time to move on!And to look back. History Day today on BBC Radio Scotland, but also: In the course of transferring most of my ‘working’ CDs and LPs to The Radiocroft, I had a chance to review some mislaid demos and records I should have made a great…

  • …have yourself a merry little Christmas…

    Just getting ready for the Christmas Eve Tom Morton Show, and looking forward to a two-day break before the programme returns on the 27th. That’s BBC Radio Scotland’s History Day, and we’re going to be working our way through four (and a bit) decades of music, with special guests Donovan, Alan Mair (Beatstalkers and The…

  • The corpse of milk

    ….as I believe James Joyce said.What was life like in culinary Scotland before the advent of Ian Mellis? I was reared on Dairylea and later (the height of sophistication) La Vache Qui Rit. But that, on our first French holiday back in 1968 (the guns, the gendarmes, the revolutionaries!) paled into insignificance compared to the…

  • Proof

    I uploaded this picture during the show using my mobile, as I got a text from ‘Tam’ querying the ‘liveness’ of the show, suggesting it was all recorded and that I was actually on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. Which is next week.

  • Solstice sky

    About ten to nine this morning, on the shortest day of the year. Hard to believe. The summer solstice seems like yesterday, with its full-on broadcasting frenzy from dawn until midnight, parties on the pier, music, dancing and pies. Anyway, here we are at midwinter and the weather is really lovely – mild and clear.…

  • Have yourself a kitschy little Christmas…

    Thanks to the wonderful Ship of Fools website, here are two of the most appallingly kitsch Christmas presents known to man or God, for the religious or cynical person in your life: I can’t help feeling that the St Sebastian pin cushion (buy here)is actually a rather clever joke…but I fear the Christ on a…

  • Santa’s Somerfield Beer Grotto

    This is what greets you when you first enter the Somerfield supermarket in Lerwick. No wonder Rudolph’s got a red nose.

  • One of the best rock’n’roll documentaries ever made

    Tom Petty’s songs always take me by surprise. One minute, I’m listening to something like Refugee or The Waiting, sincerely believing that these are among the finest slices of melodic rock ever recorded, the next I’m swept off my feet by the likes of Reverend and the Makers, Fionn Regan or another of new kids…

  • Stormy dawn over Hillswick Ness

    After a bizarrely lengthy but refreshing 11-hour sleep, this was the scene at about 7.50 am today, Thursday, looking south west out of St Magnus’ Bay along the Ness of Hillswick. It’s a low-res ‘phone snap.