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…is called The Lovers, and is the latest in the series involving private eye protagonist Charlie Parker. Thoroughly recommended, and unusual in its combination of hard-nosed crime, supernatural nastiness and full-on horror. Not to mention a bit of Irish humour, all backed up with a beautifully realised Maine/NYC setting. Connolly (no, not Michael Connelly) has…

s ‘Caddie’ in this instance, referring to tame or pet lambs/sheep, often hand-reared and familiar presences in the household. Only not ours, where I fear Lulu the St Bernard would look balefully on the notion. It was cold, grey and damp at the Voe Show, though as always it was good to see the seriously…

The “consultants’ choice” eh? That apostrophe is key. Do they mean ALL consultants? In which case, that is a clear breach of advertising standards. SOME consultants, maybe. Oh no, wait a minute. Maybe they don’t mean medical consultants. Maybe they mean the kind of consultants organisations hire at a cost of X-thousand quid a day…

And so, after four hours on the train from Wick, I have reached Inverness. I have an hour here before the next train to Aberdeen, so I am now ensconced in an old haunt, the glorious foyer lounge of the Royal Highland (formerly Station) Hotel. Here you can hide behind giant plants, flop into comfortable…

To the Santa Monica/Venice boardwalk of Scotland, for breakfast at the Washington Cafe in bright sunshine as surfers attempt to surf, joggers jog, swimmers shriek with agony at the cold of the North Sea, and The Loneliest Teddy Bear In The World gazes mournfully out to sea. Ah yes, Aberdeen in summer. The Downtube folding…

Now THAT was a truly bizarre, and enlightening experience. I’d been asked ages ago to be one of the judges for the Independent Bottlers’ Challenge, a competition in which the top indie bottlers of malt whisky submit their goods to be rated, blind, by a team of entirely sober people. No need for faffing about…

This is the circuit James (offspring, now 18) and I used to ride regularly. He can do it in 55 minutes, counter-clockwise, which entails an immediate climb up the debilitating Clavie. It took me an hour and five minutes tonight, clockwise. That’s mostly slow climbs with a few mild descents and two punishing hills to…

My Brooks B17 is, oddly enough, 17 years old. It was bought for my first Orbit, a glorious Reynolds 531 ST tourer, a Gold Medal Alivio. I still have that particular velocipede, all hand-brazed, double-butted, entirely Sheffield made, lugged to within in inch of its super-comfortable life. The finish on the original bike was appalling,…

…not seeing Edwyn Collins perform with Malcolm Ross; not seeing Dave play with Paolo; not seeing Nick Cave. And missing a live performance of this titanic song:

I think it was Camy or Kev, regular listeners both, who mentioned that Springsteen’s My Lucky Day, from his most recent album Working on a Dream, was reminiscent of…something else. I’d been thinking the same thing for weeks. And tonight, after a bit of trawling through Google and YouTube (I could hear those words, ‘in…