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Bumpy flight into Castle Greyskull but it could have been worse. We could have crashed, for example. Or disappeared into the Orkney Triangle.Very peculiar meal in Cinnamon, reputedly the city’s best Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi restaurant. Ordered Bangladeshi fish curry as this is one of Europe’s top fishing ports. If you can’t get fresh fish in Aberdeen… But…

Since the first snow fell in the early hours of Wednesday (or was it Tuesday? I have entered a dream-like Narnian state) the weather has essentially been bright, crisp, cold and sunny. Shetland at its most beautiful. The word for the weekend, though is ‘wind’, and if it snows again, we could be in for…

It’s the special silence you get with slow snowflakes in the darkness. And we were lucky, I suppose, on Tuesday night with the absolute lack of wind. It’s classic coorie-in weather, a time for lighting the Rayburn and the open fire in the lounge, for sipping Talisker as the fragrance of burning peat fills the…

Bicycles! They’re great! I used to have two in Aberdeen for my regular sojourns there, but they both got nicked from the BBC’s supposedly secure bike park (not only that, but not a single person who works at the Beeb in Aberdeen noticed they’d gone; or the freshly-sawn chains lying on the ground). I still…

….or ‘the gate’ in English. I am fascinated by the remnants of old sheep-gates you find throughout Shetland, where old fences have rotted away…they tend, for some reason, to be on the edge of cliffs. This has prompted various flights of CS Lewis/George Macdonald/Tolkien- type fancy concering their possible use as gateways to another, even…

Here’s the new song, Welcome to Bobland, in all its Garageland glory (what a great piece of software…if only I knew how to use it!). Download or just listen online, and remember, if you do meet Bobby Z on the Cairngorm railway, do tell him that Shot of Love is the great underrated album, Self…

The tragic and very sudden death of my accountant, Bob, has meant that for the first time in a decade or more I’ve been having to pore over the income and expenditure of the Morton endeavours. Failing completely to understand anything at all about capital allowances, written down values and all that gubbins, I simply…

Much as one deplores the activities of those Devonians who have been ransacking the containers of other people’s stuff washed up in Lyme Bay…one can’t help but be amused by this…

…has just arrived. There is snow on Ronas Hill! It’s cold and changeable but relatively survivable – one of these days when you really want just get on the all-weather gear and head for the remotest parts of Northmavine, such as Uyea, the Lang Ayre or the top of Ronas Hill itself. Good to see…

Lines on the occasion of Mr Bob Dylan buying a house in Nethybridge… I was living in a caravan in AviemoreWith a rescue greyhound called JoeAnd a Polish girl called PerditaIn the first of the winter snowsAnd the condensation fell like rainEven the dog wore a plastic suitPerdita went back to KrakowShe was suffering from…