November 2009

Hillswick’s local shop has been shut for a year, and its absence has been absolutely awful for our remote wee island community. No access to bread, milk, coffee and all the other things you always forget to buy either in Lerwick (35 miles) or Brae (10 miles). No Shetland Times on a Friday morning. No…

Glen Hansard from The Frames and Marketa Irglova, as featured in the movie Once (Falling Slowly) now called The Swell Season and on their second album (Strict Joy. This track is on the Word free CD (December)and is the best thing there (though Pugwash’s Nice to be Nice is…really nice. Got to love Glen’s somewhat,…

I’d promised an old friend, Brian McGlynn, that I’d find a couple of pictures taken back in the days when I thought I was a bit of rock’n’roll photographer..1983 or thereabouts. Both show manifestations of the band Woza, originally formed by Brian and Ricky Ross as a full-tilt attempt at rock’n’roll success. One of them…

I got one of those wee Flip video cameras, and this is my first, very rough, attempt at video blogging. This is the walk from the Victoria Pier in Lerwick, Shetland, to the BBC Radio Shetland studio whence the TM show emanates…any variation between this and my ‘official’ BBC picture is a compliance matter and…

In My View, Sunday Post, 8 November Talent, said the writer Stephen King, is a blunt knife that has to be delivered with enormous force. Success, said force having been delivered, may or may not follow. Very good books, even books discounted to within a millimetre of break-even, can fail miserably to be snatched from…

This is the Brae bonfire, all set for 5th November: gunpowder, treason, plot etc. The usual stuff.

Sunday mornings, the frying pans come out (cast iron, cleaned only in hot water, no detergent) and it’s time for The Full Zetlandic. Or The Partial, as I have seen gargantuan Shetland morning repasts which include fried smoked salmon and fried beans, plus of course the fried bannock, sassermeat (saucermeat) black pudding, bacon, eggs and…