Somewhere on an old Highland road, it’s waiting for you. If you can find it…

For the audio version of this, with all music included, listen on Mixcloud here:

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/at-the-broken-record-inn-an-introduction/

The Broken Record Inn is both easy to find, and obscurely difficult to enter, although its door is usually unlocked. We are trusting folk in the far north, and licensing hours are regarded in our location as…well. Advisory. But we do not advertise. There is no sign externally that this ancient hostelry is still, in its high and windswept position, functioning.

Jackson Browne — Running on Empty

Rod Stewart — Country Comfort

Of course, we have a telephone, a landline, but the number is ex-directory and known only to a few, mostly locals. You will seek in vain for any internet presence save these pages, which you will notice are mostly text-and-music based.

And yet we have a reputation. There are tales of a genial welcoming landlord, adventurous menus, a roaring peat fire, and an inspiring selection of whiskies and beers. The Broken Record is, some say, a secret hideaway in the far reaches of the Highlands where the occasional well-known musician blows through and plays a set of hitherto unheard songs. Where the jukebox is eccentric, esoteric but always interesting. Where the four rooms upstairs offer…unusual decor. There is art for sale on the walls, even a selection of second-hand books and records.

Some of this is true. Much is not.

World Party — She’s the One

Elvis Costello — My Mood Swings

Yusuf/Cat Stevens — Wild World

There are rooms, occasionally let to people I know or regulars whose capacity for drink has outrun their ability to drive home.

There is a peat fire – The inn is on high moorland and peat has traditionally been cut here for centuries, though rampant commercial forestry nearby has brought the tang of woodsmoke to our winters.

But our hospitality offering is – how can I put this – austere. We offer a choice of three whiskies: An unnamed 12-year-old Islay malt, probably Ardbeg. Some cannot live without their phenols. A no-age statement Glen Slanachan, made 15 miles from us, down the hill called The Clave; they harvest peat for the distillery on the croft next door to the inn. And the blend known as Morton’s, cheap, cheerful and plentiful, in that there were 20 cases of it here when I bought the place. There is one gin, one vodka, both made from raw spirit produced locally, and sometimes legally. Three beers, a lager, a heavy and a stout, all brewed by my neighbours at Sandvoe on the other side of the Clave, Njuggle Ales.

If you want a soft drink, there’s water from our spring, which has never run dry yet. A bit brown, but it goes well with a dram.

Rezillos — I Can’t Stand My Baby

Adam and the Ants — Zerøx

David Bowie — Sorrow

Oh, and we have a decent cellar of mostly French wines, with a few sherries and ports. Some are affordable. Some are not. Some are pleasant, some are not. There’s no list, as such. I’ll serve you what I think you deserve. I have a couple of Tesco bags-in-boxes that have been here for a year or so, a Chilean red and an Italian white. Pray you avoid them. No Prosecco or Champagne. Nothing fizzy, in fact. We do offer coffee and tea. Properly made V60 filter coffee, roasted in Perth, burr-ground. And leaf Assam. The kind of people who like herbal concoctions don’t come here. Or not more than once.

Joe Jackson — Baby Stick Around

Lou Reed — I Love You Suzanne

Food? Bread, cakes, scones from the Slanachan bakery, cheese, bacon, and eggs from Adelaide at the Cloy croft. Every so often on a special occasion, we’ll get in some lobsters, crabs or mussels and other seafood from Ben and The Gripper down at Sandvoe, where the long sea inlet called Loch Vorchaig begins. Don’t ask for vegan or gluten-free options. They don’t exist here.

Where is The Broken Record Inn? Off the beaten track, you might say. You will find us above the snowline on what some may think is an unusually broad B-road. But this was once the main road north, until a bridge over the Slanachan Firth was built in the 1980s, and this old drovers’ route became a meandering loop through the high moors, often impassable in winter and dangerous all year round for those not used to its vicissitudes – the wandering sheep, deer and of course the ghosts. By the time the infamous North Coast 500 route was established in the third millennium, the surface of the Clave had deteriorated to such an extent that for the giant camper vans, fragile Lamborghinis and clanking classic cars favoured by so-called North Coasters, this route became extremely ill-advised. Some locals were reputed to ensure that was so. Now traffic is light and usually purposeful. People have a reason for coming this way.

Some travellers are intent on another destination, and drive past The Broken Record without seeming to notice us. Others, as I say, can’t find the way in. There are the lost, too.

The Motors — Dancing the Night Away

North Country Fair — When the Circle Closes

I am usually behind the bar, and Adelaide comes in at the weekends, or if I’m away on business. Other business, but that’s rare nowadays. We take turns in the little kitchen, cutting bread, making coffee, that kind of thing. Sometimes Adelaide’s mother and father come in to help, Ellen and Dieter from the wee housing scheme outside Sandvoe

Welcoming? Yes, in a diffident and quiet way. Unless we’re having a big night, maybe with one of our favourite bands from Inverness or Tain, people like Pablo Picasso and the Dalliance, or Martin Stephenson if he’s home. Things can get noisy.

There are events just for the folk from round about, exhibition openings. We usually have paintings from a few folk on the walls – Kally Everstadt, that lad they call Jingle, real name Fingal. Feri Angelhair. Some of it’s quite…decorative. We sell a surprising amount of art, actually. You’d be shocked at the secure sources of high income around here. Or maybe you wouldn’t.

Books and records come and go. I buy and sell, doubles from my own collection, mostly. What do I like? Well…pop in and have a look. A listen.

If you can find the place. If you’re…meant to find us.

Yvonne Lyon — The Coffee Song

The The — I Saw the Light

Mostly the Broken Record is about chat, though. Stories. There’s no background music, as such. You can be heard here, You can hear yourself speak. No television. There’s a mobile signal outside – 5G, in fact, from the mast a little way towards the first forestry plantation. But there’s something about the Inn’s structure, the old granite it’s built from, that prevents signals penetrating the walls. A kind of natural Faraday cage.

If you find your way to the Broken Record, you probably deserve to be here, and to be listened to, as long as you have a story to tell. You probably do. We all do, after all. This is a place of stories.

We do have a Jukebox. In fact, we have two. There’s an old restored Rockola that plays seven-inch vinyl singles, and a very special one. It’s new, made by Sound Leisure in Yorkshire and called the Anniversary Rocket. They build them to order and the thing is, it plays 12-inch albums. Vinyl of course. There’s nothing digital here. Only records at the Broken Record…

Did you notice that royal ‘we’? It’s mostly me, of course, but the collective noun is for the…I was going to say business, but enterprise covers it better. And there’s Adelaide, of course. She sometimes stays over.

Did I mention that we only take cash? Maybe I forgot. That puts a lot of folk off too. So do the dogs. My Malamut called Grief, calm and friendly in most circumstances. Unless. A variety of sheepdogs, some more neurotic than others. No cats. There was one, but it didn’t last.

Anyway, the main bar is pretty snug, I’d say, oak-paneled, the fireplace taking up much of one wall. That’s where the paintings go. Jingle has some pretty nice watercolours up at the moment. Reasonable prices. There’s a big old conservatory off, and that’s usually where the bands play if we have one on. There are views east over the Clave, but I like it best at night, especially when it’s still, and been snowing and the sound of everything changes; the music sounds better. The jukeboxes are next to the bar, either side, and it’s a nice old walnut bar salvaged from a cruise liner, they say, broken up at Invergordon after the First World War. The SS Anastasia. There are sofas and low tables in the conservatory, which has its own cast iron stove at the opposite end from the stage. Sometimes with both fires going, the smell of peat and woodsmoke can be pretty strong. That and tobacco. You can only smoke in the conservatory. Yeah, I know.

Well, I say tobacco. That depends on who’s in. It’s not good to compromise Hamish the constable from Slanachan, though he’s usually quite understanding.

Good toilets. I pride myself on the toilets. Fresh towels every day. Soft toilet paper. Handmade soap from Shetland.

What else? Oh, well, maybe you want to know a bit about me: what brought me here, how the place makes enough money to sustain me in the wee flat upstairs.

But that’s another story. If you’ll excuse me, I want to play some more music now. And I see a couple of strangers shaking off the rain. Grief is eyeing them quizzically. I don’t like the look of them either.

Warren Zevon — My Shit’s Fucked Up

You can hear this read, with all the music, on Mixcloud here:

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/at-the-broken-record-inn-an-introduction/