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Those aspirational slivers of minty luxury conjure up some memories. And music! You can read the newsletter or listen to it, interspersed with 15 tracks (playlist below, and link to the Mixcloud stream) plus some vintage adverts. From Lola in Slacks to Lindsey Black via the Roches, Yvonne Lyon, Linda Thomson and more. After Eight…

The awfulness of exercise, past and present, with 15 tracks of noisy music to go The audio column. Music with words. A diary with optional noise. This week, it’s mostly to do with gym. As in gymnasiums. With a sonic bias towards garage rock. 15 tracks, some louder than others. Have a read. Or take…

Winter male legs are being unwisely displayed It’s Bad January in Ayrshire, cold and brutal blasts of Arctic near-gale are gusting through my triple-fleeced Swedish Goretex jacket, Shetland wool gansie, insulated gloves, jeans and Patagonia long johns. In front of me on the prom is a middle aged man wearing shorts. The only notable thing…

The bands I never saw. And some I did. As an experiment, I read the following text in what I hope is a convincing and meaningful manner on the hour-long Mixcloud show you can stream from the link at the end. Songs by most of the artists mentioned are played: Dean Ford and the Gaylords,…

On screen or in print, it’s a work of tremendous power I read Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies when it was first published, and wrote the piece reproduced below. It and much else is at http://www.thebeatcroft.com. Oddly enough, I now find myself in our wee Ayrshire flat, round the corner from where chunks of the BBC’s TV…

O Come, All Ye Unfaithful… Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 51 A humanist funeral in Christmas week, and we are singing hymns and praying.  Not capital H Humanist, approved by the official societies of stern secularism. We humans are…

On day four without power: a reflection on snow, Shetland and survival I have always loved snow, and as a child I longed to be stranded by it, preferably somewhere warm and fully equipped with crispy bacon sandwiches and chocolate. At Christmas. This was the fault of two writers, CS Lewis and Arthur Ransome. In…

Island life, the joys and sacrifices. Embrace or leave. And Tom’s 10 rules for public drinking. Former Guardian writer Peter Hetherington liked Shetland very much. But he could never live here, he said.  “I don’t think my wife could handle the lack of sun-dried tomatoes.” Nowadays there’s panko breadcrumbs, gluten-free Belgian chocolate and tinned water…

From fine dining in Glasgow to council secrecy in Shetland Back on the Old Rock after a relatively smooth 12-and-a-half hours overnight from Aberdeen “atween wadders” as Zetlandic dialect has it. Our sleep fuelled by anti-histamines and the NorthLink ferryfood I always enjoy, in all its cheerful, bluff heftiness. Still, a steak pie is NOT…

Banking on the climb up a childhood mountain in Troon The Ballast Bank is my favourite walk in the world, and not just because Troon’s legendary harbourside fish and chip shop, the Wee Hurrie, huddles next to the fishmarket at one end. Though the thought of what deep-fried delights may be waiting for you certainly…