April 2008

  • It’s camper van time!

    Fresh off the boat this morning after a ‘blind’ buy on eBay, this is the new (F-reg) camper van. It’s a Ford Transit, and thus has a fine rock’n’roll heritage. I finally got round to telling Susan about it this morning…she hasn’t seen it yet. What can I say? It’s got a satellite TV and…

  • Is Nick Lowe’s Jesus of Cool the great post-punk, post-modern pop masterpiece?

    Just bought the re-released, special 30th anniversary edition of the album today at Clive’s. And it is truly a fantastic array of deliberately derivative, scabrously witty pop perfection, full of comments on the music industry and munching-of-the-hand-that-feeds. It makes the Arctic Monkeys sound like slavish lackeys of The Man, but then this came out of…

  • Roderick’s picture of Chris and Penny and the Great Beasts of Yell

    Roderick Aichinger is a young photographer from Germany, who came to Shetland two years ago, after seeing the book Tom Kidd and I did, Black Gold Tide. I think this picture of Chris and Penny, St Bernard breeders of Yell, from whom we got the lovely Lulu, is absolutely brilliant.

  • Edwyn’s triumphant return

    2003, and the show was coming from Inverness, prior to a live roadshow in Portmahomack. Special guest was Edwyn Collins, who was both playing live – solo – at the roadshow in the Port and on the radio at the Inverness studio. I’d known Edwyn since the mid-eighties, and my wife Susan was at university…

  • Spring at The Radiocroft, without a campervan

    Daffodils are out at The Radiocroft, despite the temperature, which remains Baltic. In fact, the Baltic will be a hell of a lot warmer than it is here. Cycled along today and nearly got frostbite. Nevertheless, the colours are changing as spring kicks in, and I find to my utter and complete astonishment that my…

  • Lobsters and the Mighty Torslanda

    A wee present…two lobsters, to be precise, expertly turned into thermidor by Susan and the very berries with tatties and salad from the polytunnel. Yum. Meanwhile, the Mighty Torslanda passed its MOT with no advisories or faults. Just taxed the big silver beast for another year and thundered into and out of Lerwick with no…

  • Danny Federici

    The death of Danny Federici, keyboard player with the E Street Band, was announced last night. More details on the official Springsteen website. Malignant melanoma, which is rather too close to home for comfort. Not that any of them are likely to read this blog, but my thoughts are with his family and associates.

  • Edinburgh, stem cell research and very spicy cold pakora

    Only in Edinburgh: being woken at 2.00 am by the sound of someone playing tuned bongo drums outside the window. Well, it was Marchmont I suppose. The stem cell research event went well, I think. But it was only afterwards, in the marbled and oaken grandeur of the Scotsman Hotel, that the real science fiction…

  • Me, Kate Moss, stem cell research and unexpected encounters on the last train from Edinburgh to Glasgow

    Found myself having dinnner last night at The Grain Store in Edinburgh’s Victoria Street – very good, but it wasn’t until we adjourned to the Bow Bar opposite that we realised what all the paparazzi kerfuffle in the street had been about. Seems Kate Moss had been in town with her boyfriend, who is the…

  • The Inn at Lathones – the new Bein Inn, but better

    I had the privilege on Sunday to be the first performer at The Stables, part of the Inn at Lathones in Fife (near St Andrews on the Kirkcaldy road). David Mundell, formerly of the Beinn Inn at Glenfarg, is now booking acts for the Inn and he has some great people coming. Have a look…