Perhaps telling my wife that possessing a new guitar was like "having a new woman in your life" wasn't particularly wise. She took it well, though. And the arrival of my new Moon 0003 ( http://www.moonguitars.co.uk/ )has caused little domestic trauma.
But then, I did pay for it by selling (count them) three other guitars on eBay. One really old and battered Suzuki (bought at the Shetland Country Music Club's closing down auction), a Simon and Patrick 12-string, purchased on a mad whim after hearing Roger McGuinn do a live session on Radio Scotland's Janice Forsyth Show, and what was for many years my pride and joy: A rare black Martin J40 with full built-in electrics.
The Suzuki and the S&P were never serious elements in my strumming-and-picking life. The Martin, on the other hand, I bought new nearly 20 years ago for what seemed then (and still does) a colossal mount of money. It has been played all over the country, in studios, bars, concert halls and living rooms. It has been dropped, scratched, battered and, alas, seriously damaged by another guitar, a Martin Shenandoah (Martin's brief flirtation with buying pre-cut parts from Japan and assembling them in the USA) , falling headstock-first into the belly.
When that happened, I was so upset I put the instrument away in its case for a month. I couldn't bear to look at it. In the end, Jimmy Moon (see above) repaired it, immaculately, but I think it's fair to say I never felt the same about the thing again. And when the refinished front "finish checked" - what they call that crazy paving effect when the wood expands faster than the brittle varnish can handle) it was if the guitar itself was rebelling.
James Taylor talks about "finding" songs in certain guitars; there is a magic about the process of songwriting, of the relationship you have with a guitar. And sometimes that magic just disappears.
The Martin was never really a domestic guitar. It was built to project to an audience, not to the player, and so its metier was not the back-room twiddling that has largely been its fate these past 10 years. At least, that's what I told myself when I flogged it, second time around on eBay. First time, some scamster attempted to carry out that old Western-Union repayments fraud with it, but was soon seen off.
Anyway, I had my eye on the Moon, which had been hanging in Lerwick's High Level Music the best part of a year. It was apparently made by Innes Thomson from Fair Isle, who was and is working with Jimmy Moon, and it would probably have sold long ago if someone hadn't given its front a whack and left a wee bit of scarring on the lovely finish. Still, as best I could tell, I liked its lively, ringing tone (typical, in my experience, of this kind of hand-made guitar) and once the other guitars were sold, I made an offer for it which was duly accepted. Complete with Hiscox Liteflite case, I think it was a bargain.
And I love it. I absolutely love it. Once I had it at home, I spent some time just looking at it. And then hours playing it, fingerpicking, strumming, up and down the neck doing all those nonsensical things you don't dare in a music shop.
Looking for the magic, undoubtedly. And I have to tell you, it's there. Compounded by the fact that this guitar was made not on a production line, but was crafted in Glasgow, by someone from Shetland. Well, if Fair Isle really counts as Shetland...
The truth is, I'd lost my love for not just the guitars in my life, but playing them. Now, with my fingers aching, I'm keen to play all the time. Not just the Moon, either, but the old Shenandoah that visited such destruction on the J40 (the Shenandoah was a present from my wife; I'd never sell it) and the little Romanian travel guitar I cart about to hotels and apartments when I'm away. New strings on them all, and there's magic in them too.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Stoves
The oven on our gas cooker stopped functioning recently, necessitating the return to service of the trusty, somewhat rusty peat-fired Rayburn, once the sole means of heating and cooking in the manse, now a fallback option for those times when more modern technologies fail.
A recent absence of central heating oil (during which I seriously considered using diesel, cooking oil, extra virgin olive oil or a mixture of all of these with turpentine) led to the firing up of the old range, which I must say is one of the easiest-lighting solid fuel stoves I have ever worked with.
Wise men and wiser women inform me that the length of the chimney and the shape of the (right hand) flue on our Rayburn contribute to its almost supernatural ability to light first time, every time, as long as The Sunday Times (non-colour bits) is used to get the kindling going. And I suppose the fact that we stored away all the old lath from the lath-and-plaster walls we had to replace helps: you can never have too many sticks, in my opinion, as John Knox reputedly said to his final torturers.
I have, though, struggled with a variety of dodgy stoves in cottages and caravans, houses and huts throughout Shetland and points sooth. The unexpectedly blocked chimney, the house reeking with, well reek; the way some fires can produce what seems to be concentrated essence of peat oil, in commercial quantities. The freezing living room which simply stays cold, despite repeated attempts at lighting a recalcitrant fire. The increasingly deranged attempts to create a draft on a windless day, and the use of dangerously flammable substances to get something started: salmon feed bags (oh, the damage to the ozone layer!) the aforementioned diesel. Err…petrol, lighter fluid, air freshener (straight from the aerosol – don’t try this at home kids) and aftershave (Yves St Laurent, since you ask). The chestnuts we roasted didn’t taste quite right. But they had a certain je ne sais quoi.
Our Rayburn (its redundant back boiler now filled with sand) is not a beauty. It could never feature as an Aga-substitute in one of those interior design features. For a start, it’s that hideous brown-fading-to-grey colour from the 1960s. The enamel is chipped in numerous places, there’s rust aplenty. When the manse was seriously flooded, way back in the years BA (Before Armouring) it had a firebox full of seawater, and allegedly two workmen perched on the hob to escape the attacking giant sea urchins swept in by the implacable tide. But it still works. And how.
The problem we had the other week was an inability to cook pizzas. In fact, everything edible in the fridge needed an oven. So it was time to sweep the various ornaments off the Rayburn and get to work with the Sunday Times, some lath and the best blue peats we could find.
It was moderately windy. And once the oven began to heat up, it wouldn’t stop. Way past 300 degrees C it went. Pizzas (or peatsas, as the bairns called them) cooked in seconds. A chicken stew was carbonised in 15 minutes. We were offering cheap saunas to passing Finns. And eventually, anxious gazes at the smoke belching out of the chimney indicated that bad things were happening in the lum.
Even a large shovelful of wet sand in the firebox didn’t put the Rayburn out. It just stopped the chimney turning into Northmavine’s Mount Etna.
As things have returned to normal, as ovens have started working again, as we have grown confident in our supplies of kerosene, the Rayburn has returned to coolness and operates as a kind of cast iron sideboard once more. But when it’s in full fiery flow, it regains its rightful role, becomes the absolute core of the house, the centre, the thing around which we huddle and have our being.
Last week I was raking around in the ruins of Seaview, one of the old Heylor houses, and found a bit of its old stove. The piece of iron door still had the range’s name (and it’s significant that all stoves have names – Royales, Regents and the like) clearly embossed: Enchantress. And yes, there’s a magic about a good solid-fuel stove. Ours has a name too, but it’s not stamped anywhere, or visible to anyone but me. It’s home.
A recent absence of central heating oil (during which I seriously considered using diesel, cooking oil, extra virgin olive oil or a mixture of all of these with turpentine) led to the firing up of the old range, which I must say is one of the easiest-lighting solid fuel stoves I have ever worked with.
Wise men and wiser women inform me that the length of the chimney and the shape of the (right hand) flue on our Rayburn contribute to its almost supernatural ability to light first time, every time, as long as The Sunday Times (non-colour bits) is used to get the kindling going. And I suppose the fact that we stored away all the old lath from the lath-and-plaster walls we had to replace helps: you can never have too many sticks, in my opinion, as John Knox reputedly said to his final torturers.
I have, though, struggled with a variety of dodgy stoves in cottages and caravans, houses and huts throughout Shetland and points sooth. The unexpectedly blocked chimney, the house reeking with, well reek; the way some fires can produce what seems to be concentrated essence of peat oil, in commercial quantities. The freezing living room which simply stays cold, despite repeated attempts at lighting a recalcitrant fire. The increasingly deranged attempts to create a draft on a windless day, and the use of dangerously flammable substances to get something started: salmon feed bags (oh, the damage to the ozone layer!) the aforementioned diesel. Err…petrol, lighter fluid, air freshener (straight from the aerosol – don’t try this at home kids) and aftershave (Yves St Laurent, since you ask). The chestnuts we roasted didn’t taste quite right. But they had a certain je ne sais quoi.
Our Rayburn (its redundant back boiler now filled with sand) is not a beauty. It could never feature as an Aga-substitute in one of those interior design features. For a start, it’s that hideous brown-fading-to-grey colour from the 1960s. The enamel is chipped in numerous places, there’s rust aplenty. When the manse was seriously flooded, way back in the years BA (Before Armouring) it had a firebox full of seawater, and allegedly two workmen perched on the hob to escape the attacking giant sea urchins swept in by the implacable tide. But it still works. And how.
The problem we had the other week was an inability to cook pizzas. In fact, everything edible in the fridge needed an oven. So it was time to sweep the various ornaments off the Rayburn and get to work with the Sunday Times, some lath and the best blue peats we could find.
It was moderately windy. And once the oven began to heat up, it wouldn’t stop. Way past 300 degrees C it went. Pizzas (or peatsas, as the bairns called them) cooked in seconds. A chicken stew was carbonised in 15 minutes. We were offering cheap saunas to passing Finns. And eventually, anxious gazes at the smoke belching out of the chimney indicated that bad things were happening in the lum.
Even a large shovelful of wet sand in the firebox didn’t put the Rayburn out. It just stopped the chimney turning into Northmavine’s Mount Etna.
As things have returned to normal, as ovens have started working again, as we have grown confident in our supplies of kerosene, the Rayburn has returned to coolness and operates as a kind of cast iron sideboard once more. But when it’s in full fiery flow, it regains its rightful role, becomes the absolute core of the house, the centre, the thing around which we huddle and have our being.
Last week I was raking around in the ruins of Seaview, one of the old Heylor houses, and found a bit of its old stove. The piece of iron door still had the range’s name (and it’s significant that all stoves have names – Royales, Regents and the like) clearly embossed: Enchantress. And yes, there’s a magic about a good solid-fuel stove. Ours has a name too, but it’s not stamped anywhere, or visible to anyone but me. It’s home.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Property owning democracy
Glasgow is for rent, or most of it. That’s how it seems, as the estate agents’ notices mutter forlornly from dozens, no hundreds of windows. That buy-to-rent dream is going horribly wrong, and yet still the riverside flats soar upwards, all pre-stressed concrete and increasingly stressed developers.
The housing market is about to go into freefall, and the only question is: will it become obvious, will it hurt, before or after the election? If the Government can hold things back until the summer, they will, but it is unstoppable. The whole culture of property investment, fuelled by an entirely ludicrous system of tax relief and the Thatcher myth of a “property-owning democracy”, is about to implode.
Except in Shetland, and that’s really an adjustment. Once, about six years ago, you could get an owner-occupied three-bedroom crofthouse, in good, restored condition, with 4 acres of in-by land, some of it pretty good, outbuildings and 100 acres’ share in the common grazings, for £20,000. Nowadays, and I think this will be constant for at least another year, because these prices are a whole lot lower than the rest of the country, you’re looking at £100,000 for the same property.
Let’s face it, what can you get for £100,000 in one of the big cities? True, the whole living-off-equity process needs a bigger pot than it used to (I remember when folk were flogging their £250,000 flats in London and buying a £20,000 croft, then living the candlemaker dream off the interest from a building society) but still. Shetland remains the last dream destination with relatively low (but higher than they used to be) property prices.
Even that won’t last, so if you’re thinking of heading north, do it soon. And do I have a property for sale? Well. Maybe.
The housing market is about to go into freefall, and the only question is: will it become obvious, will it hurt, before or after the election? If the Government can hold things back until the summer, they will, but it is unstoppable. The whole culture of property investment, fuelled by an entirely ludicrous system of tax relief and the Thatcher myth of a “property-owning democracy”, is about to implode.
Except in Shetland, and that’s really an adjustment. Once, about six years ago, you could get an owner-occupied three-bedroom crofthouse, in good, restored condition, with 4 acres of in-by land, some of it pretty good, outbuildings and 100 acres’ share in the common grazings, for £20,000. Nowadays, and I think this will be constant for at least another year, because these prices are a whole lot lower than the rest of the country, you’re looking at £100,000 for the same property.
Let’s face it, what can you get for £100,000 in one of the big cities? True, the whole living-off-equity process needs a bigger pot than it used to (I remember when folk were flogging their £250,000 flats in London and buying a £20,000 croft, then living the candlemaker dream off the interest from a building society) but still. Shetland remains the last dream destination with relatively low (but higher than they used to be) property prices.
Even that won’t last, so if you’re thinking of heading north, do it soon. And do I have a property for sale? Well. Maybe.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Thanks
Just very briefly, the family have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and kindness since the accident involving my wife Susan last week. Our heartfelt sympathies go to the family of the other driver involved.
Susan is at home and getting better. She will be fine.
Susan is at home and getting better. She will be fine.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Sick
I have to admit to loving American Chopper. And it was my 13-year-old son James who forced me to watch the series in the first place. We also bonded over Long Way Round (that's the one where Ewen McGregor and his pal Charley Boorman go round the world on a pair of free BMW R1150Gs bikes (free! And the two of them as rich as Croesus!). Well sort of almost round the world, and with a film crew, doctor and presumably a vast amount of agentorial concern.
While I'm on the subject, Ewen and Charley were apparently inspired (as so many of us were) by Ted Simon's wonderful book Jupiter's Travels, about his epic trans-global bike trip. Ted pops up in Long Way Round for about 45 seconds, in Kazakhstan, for no apparent reason, looking embarrassed and unhappy, and I'm desperate to know the real story behind that fleeting appearance. What happened? Did they fly him out there? Was he meant to accompany the pair? Was there some kind of falling out? Not that anyone's going to tell me.
Anyway, back to American Chopper, where ridiculous motorcycles become even more ridiculous. It's the use of the word 'sick' as an adulatory adjective that gets me every time. Things aren't cool, or really cool, in the crazy world of Orange County Cycles. They're sick, or truly sick.
Meanwhile I have been truly, sickly sick in the pre-Chopper sense for the past six days, with flu. nasty, nasty stuff, only alleviated by the delights of watching DVDs in bed on my laptop: Celebrity (Kenneth Branagh as Woody Allen, Charlize Theron looking amazing, Judy Davis epicly funny; generally excellent) Shadows and Fog (Woody doing Fritz Lang; runs out of steam) and the truly wonderful Norwegian film Elling, a sort of Dumb and Dumber with real pathos and sensitivity. I'm being a tad crass, perhaps. But as I think Dumb and Dumber is the second best film of all time, that is high, if crass praise indeed.
Whisky, rum, garlic, co-codamol, red wine, curry, vitamin pills - nothing cured me but bed rest and time. The word is this: flu-jab (which would be two words, were it not for that hyphen). Get one. It's sick. Really sick.
While I'm on the subject, Ewen and Charley were apparently inspired (as so many of us were) by Ted Simon's wonderful book Jupiter's Travels, about his epic trans-global bike trip. Ted pops up in Long Way Round for about 45 seconds, in Kazakhstan, for no apparent reason, looking embarrassed and unhappy, and I'm desperate to know the real story behind that fleeting appearance. What happened? Did they fly him out there? Was he meant to accompany the pair? Was there some kind of falling out? Not that anyone's going to tell me.
Anyway, back to American Chopper, where ridiculous motorcycles become even more ridiculous. It's the use of the word 'sick' as an adulatory adjective that gets me every time. Things aren't cool, or really cool, in the crazy world of Orange County Cycles. They're sick, or truly sick.
Meanwhile I have been truly, sickly sick in the pre-Chopper sense for the past six days, with flu. nasty, nasty stuff, only alleviated by the delights of watching DVDs in bed on my laptop: Celebrity (Kenneth Branagh as Woody Allen, Charlize Theron looking amazing, Judy Davis epicly funny; generally excellent) Shadows and Fog (Woody doing Fritz Lang; runs out of steam) and the truly wonderful Norwegian film Elling, a sort of Dumb and Dumber with real pathos and sensitivity. I'm being a tad crass, perhaps. But as I think Dumb and Dumber is the second best film of all time, that is high, if crass praise indeed.
Whisky, rum, garlic, co-codamol, red wine, curry, vitamin pills - nothing cured me but bed rest and time. The word is this: flu-jab (which would be two words, were it not for that hyphen). Get one. It's sick. Really sick.
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