November 2024

It’s Shetland, season 9, episode 4: Swede it and weep Here come the weepy Swedes! Oh yes, the Ingmar Bergman influence is writ large in this epic concerning the desperate search for dental care in an island community largely deprived thereof. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, and it’s time for yet another flashback,…

Sandy! Get the sassermaet clatch! Well, after a slick, streamlined and genuinely exciting opening, series nine of Death In Shetland has plummeted into complex daftness over the following two episodes like a gormless sheep falling down Calder’s Geo due to over indulgence in magic mushrooms; or a camera drone damaged by too-close a Bonxie encounter.…

…and lived in Scotland Rangers and Celtic meant nothing to him The choice here in Glasgow was stark He pretended to support Patrick Thistle He didn’t know Firhill from Fir Park He had no idea who managed Scotland No notion of the offside rule He thought David Beckham was a TV chef And that heading…

He doesn’t have the key and doesn’t know when to come in… I recently bought a banjo. A five-string, Countryman closed-back affair which for the last fortnight, I have been plunking and flailing on through the long dark night of the sofa, much to the consternation of Dec the dog. Well, I say ‘bought’. What…

Living among vikings, iron age broch-dwellers, witches, naval officers and angry ministers. One wind to rule them all I love these nights, the darkness battering and blustering in a big, not yet overwhelming wind. Deeper into winter and the house will shake, vibrate, thrum; we’ll lose power, struggle even to reach the washhouse where the…