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Two poems and a song. And trying to send some books. You can listen to the two poems below, read by me, by clicking on the arrow above. Or, for that matter, below. I’ve been trying to send some books to the USA. Extremely valuable, antique rarities that I’m selling for a friend. An American…

A poem and sweet suburban playlist, with pure plastic pop for now (and then) people You can listen to me reading the following essay and poem by clicking on the wee arrow above. There’s an hour-and-a-half ‘Sweet Suburbia’ playlist towards the end, with a spoken introduction on Mixcloud and the Spotify link too. THE LATE…

Including Les Vomiteurs, The Ubiquitous Chip, Two Fat Ladies at The Buttery, lost curry houses and, well…Lochgreen House Hotel in Troon… You can listen to me reading the following text here: The worst meal I’ve ever had was at a café I’ll call Les Vomiteurs in the then seriously untrendy, ungentrified, occasionally unsafe area of…

The musical frenzy that was Glasgow in the mid-1980s My photographer pal Stewart Cunningham and I are currently working on a wee photobook about our couple of years in the mid-1980s snapping and writing in Glasgow for the late music weekly Melody Maker. Here’s a taster. ‘Caught Up In This Big Rhythm’,will be available in…

Got them old lateral anterior descending artery blues again…(slight return) You can read the text below or spend nine minutes or so listening to me read it. Wednesday, late morning, April 2025. Battered plastic seating, firmly anchored. It’s sunny, hot for the start of supposed spring, and it’s quiet here at Reception. Waiting in the…

For sale: a beautiful instrument with a heap of history. A leap of faith, an hour of folk songs to listen to, and some news of Dick Gaughan You can listen to me reading the text by clicking the wee arrow below. Spotify and Mixcloud music links, and the epic song Archie’s Leap, follow towards…

Equilux to Equinox, and the race to the simmer dim is on. Some thoughts and an appropriate playlist. Sometimes we prefer the darkness, though… (You can listen to me reading what follows, if you like, by clicking the wee arrow above…the full Spotify ‘Here comes the Light’ playlist is at the end of the text…

It’s five years since the global pandemic was first declared. And dentistry basically stopped. The first Scottish lockdown was declared on 26 March 2020. I was freshly back in Shetland after a trip to the Granite Noir book festival in Aberdeen, and spent the first few days in isolation at our cottage in Heylor, Northmavine.…

For all those in the battle for undisturbed slumber… She said it’s not that I don’t love you any more We’re eternally united at the core I still have romantic feelings But plaster’s falling from the ceiling I don’t find you boring It’s the snoring Your nasal passages are constricted My sleep is terribly restricted…

March enters with some brutally blustery dreichness…but there’s music to rejoice in Shetland has been glowering at me this week, dreich and bleak and blustery, the tides high enough to bring the sea spluttering into the garden, rusting the cars ever more thoroughly, leaving seaweed in the porch and beach stones on bonnets. No smashed…