October 2009

A strange, calm sense of wellbeing comes over me in railway stations. If, that is, I’m in plenty of time for whatever train I’m supposed to be catching. It’s even better if I’m not actually catching a train at all. Not that I make a habit of just loitering on railway concourses. Stations are good…

It was too much, the overnight boat trip from Shetland, followed by a thrash down the road to Glasgow, doing the show, and then another drive down to Wigtown, for the annual book festival. I should probably have had a quiet night in then, but a gathering of whisky writers forced me to partake of…Freixenet…

Cold, cold, cold in Shetland with an icy north westerly bringing in the Greenlandic North Atlantic Blues…it’s a time for staying in a sorting things out for the dark nights, snatching the fading daylight hours fior roof repairs and house-painting. Instead, I’m on the boat tonight and heading south. Wigtown Book Festival appearance (Tom Morton’s…