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This is my first attempt at using audioblog.com, which should enable you to listen(scroll down to bottom of post, needs Flash plug-in, probably needs broadband) to the first fruits of my home recording endeavours with a Tascam DP-01FX and far too many guitars. This song was much performed (in a different version) when, thanks to…

  I know, there are too many pictures of St Bernards on sofas on this blog, but I couldn’t resist Lulu and Lucy in this sisterly pose. Back in Shetland, with the Northmavine Up Helly Aa on Friday, in which my daughter is a viking princess. I fear that the St Bernards, not to mention…

…a north-north-westerly of up to force 7, in fact, and as the captain of the Hrossey warned, there was “a bit of a swell”. Last night’s trip north from Aberdeen was the 14-and-a-half-hour special via Orkney, leaving Aberdeen at 5.00pm and arriving in Lerwick at 7.30am. The ferry gets into Kirkwall at around 11.30pm, which…

To Glenesk, one of the Angus Glens, one of the (no doubt many) surpassingly beautiful parts of Scotland I had never been. Until preliminary discussions began on me taking over scriptwriting duties on The Broons and Oor Wullie, and a meeting was convened with me, artist Pete Davidson (who lives in Glenesk) and DC Thomson…

It’s a pedometer thing. The deal is, apparently, that the average sedentary person takes 5000 steps a day, and that every step above 10,000 represents A Very Good Thing, burning off calories, increasing fitness, wearing out shoe polyurethane, pavements etc. My recent attempts to stave off the wear, tear and flabbiness of age include walking…

Ferry tomorrow. Seems I’ve hardly been home.Forecast was for winds tomorrow night, but this extraordinary calm weather may last until Tuesday of next week. It’s like spring. Only warmer. Heading for Glasgow on Saturday via Dundee (guitar repairs)and then back to Aberdeen on Monday, hopefully in time to interview Paul Weller. Hey Paul! did you…

This is the St Magnus Hotel (formerly the St Magnus Bay Hotel) in Hillswick, the township in which we live and breathe and have our being.It’s been empty and unused (though sort of maintained and, we hope, heated) for some 18 months. The owners, a company from Canterbury called, wait for it, Canterbury Travel, have…

Podcasting then. The word on everyone’s lips…tick is you’re dedicated…you may not be an old fashioned girl but you’re gonna get….oops! It’s a Costello attack! Switch Elvis off, quick! What was I saying? Oh yes, podcasting. I was astounded to hear that the Daily Telegraph now has a Podcast Editor. There was a discussion on…

Err…That’s Lulu on the left, and Lucy on the right.Mess with them and they will slobber you to within an inch of your laundry. 

There was a time when…well, when Darkness on the Edge of Town and Tunnel of Love seemed to be the only things between me and oblivion. Born in the USA, too, was an extraordinary soundtrack to one of the most difficult periods of my life, though it was harder to love, in its big-time populism.…