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Those were the days of miracles and wonder… Glasgow 1985, and it’s the Rock Garden in Queen Street, sometimes the Halt in Woodlands Road, the Fixx in Miller Street. All kinds of London record company characters are blowing in via the Holiday Inn to check out the action. The haircuts, the clothes, the drugs and…
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The culling of late night BBC Radio Scotland. “The Bauerisation of Scottish public broadcasting.”
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The fury of culturally-fleeced Shetland knitters. And two songs, loosely woven around the subject. Channel Four’s horrible attempt to turn knitting into a televisual bloodsport, Game of Wool, is subtitled ‘Britain’s best Knitter’. I can unequivocally say that there are technically better and more creative knitters than anyone on the show, including the judges, within…
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This was an editorial I wrote for the November 2012 edition of the now-deceased magazine Shetland Life “To the world, he was just one. To me, he was all the world.” November is the month of remembrance. Remembering the dead of not just two world wars, but the wars that have taken place since. The…
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Originally published in The Shetland Times. The strange saga of Virdablutt: The lost origins of Up Helly A’? A winter of Up Helly As, in all its manifestations, is almost upon us. Perhaps it is time for me to reveal some of my researches into the strange community of Virdablutt, and the evidence, such as…
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I don’t want a Hermes tie or a Paul Smith suit I just want a decent pair of Wellington boots So that through the deepest mud I can easily trudge Ones that sit secure on my feet, so they never budge If your boot comes off in a boggy patch of ground And with sock…
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The rotting of whisky Out for an (excellent, but teetotal) meal the other week I looked speculatively at the hotel’s vast collection of single malt whiskies, many bottles nearly empty or half-empty. As many had been last time I visited two years ago. And I thought about how whisky is like petrol. There are different…
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The rumours began last year, on internet forums for farmers and Toyota Hilux pick-up truck enthusiasts. I don’t know if there’s a Darknet site for users of ‘technicals’, NSTVs (Non-Standard Technical Vehicles or in Russian Teknikos); That would be Hiluxes (or other imitative truck brands) adapted to carry heavy ordnance such as machine guns, rocket,…
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Hmm…activities or substances that would be frowned upon, if not ruled completely lawless in Glasgow… …whence I have just travelled, if not travailed, arriving in the isles just as Storm Amy cancels all ferries and sends the supermarkets into bare-shelf meltdown. Not a sun-dried tomato to be had. Never mind. I have scoured Tesco for…
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A long stay in Glasgow, the Covid comeback that began it finally receding. It’s the curse that keeps on giving, this plague, isn’t it? Malevolent in its ever-changing variety of symptoms, this time including desperate wheezing and excruciating toothache, every morning a different molar. Inhaling Sensodyne didn’t help. And no free jags for pensioners under…
