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I was in Eskdalemuir to see the writer Colin Betts about a possible publishing project. He lives, it’s safe it say, in the most isolated house I’ve ever visited, three miles from the nearest proper road, in the heart of Scottish Welsh Celtdom. To get there, you have to ford the Esk, right at its…

It’s late, too late in the year to be on the peat hill at all. If I say that these peats are actually last year’s, belatedly bagged and howked home after a 12 month or more weathering on the moor, many will look askance at my right to wield a tushkar at all. As it…

Susan is threatening to put my red sofa in the newly-converted-to-holiday-accommodation barn. I am, of course, fighting a rearguard action! Literally, as I have worn a depression in this settee which perfectly suits me. Though it is….rather difficult to extricate myself from… The red sofa has become my office, my bookshelf, my occasional dining room.…

Alan Furst’s novels of WW2 and the years preceding are, on the whole, truly excellent. I thought I’d read them all, but for some reason missed Night Soldiers, which is unlike the rest of his books, being much bigger  in scale: it covers Bulgarian fascism, Soviet NKVD recruitment and training (in too much detail) the…

Home after a flying visit south, courtesy of FlyBe, the airline that charges you an extra ten quid for carrying your guitar. Still, it all worked out rather cheaper than the boat would have been, even including a hire car (assuming I’d booked a cabin on NorthLink) and was much, much less tiring. The Caravan…

The ferry across the Corran Narrows to Ardgour must be the most expensive per metre in Scotland: £6.40 for a car and passenger, to travel what seems like the length of two football pitches, if that. On Friday, with Tom Morton Show time approaching rapidly, I arrived off the ferry after a discombobulating trip down…