Recent snaps...

Variously: Dawn over Glasgow; the Assater Pillie; bizarre camping within the ruined St Ninian's Isle kirk; Stroh and Skynbow fiddles at the Violin Shop, Glasgow (we came away with a double bass and a cello); telly on the beach; the north boat, or one of them; Ullapool; sign of the Pillie-obsessed times; a tree.

...meanwhile, back in Glasgow

...I took this just after daybreak during my last visit to Glasgow, a week ago. I'd just come out of my hotel (the Devoncove - cheap, cheerful and not very clean) on Sauchiehall Street, in my favourite part of the west end - where Kelvingrove Park interfaces with Finniston, along from Mother India. The camera phone I was using (a Sony Ericsson V600i, free with my last contract) just about captures, amazingly, the shocking bluey pinkness of the dawn.
Immediately afterwards, I took my hire car back to Arnold Clark, where a man called George informed me I would be charged an extra sixty quid because one front tyre was soft. Turned out there was a nail in it. Nothing would change his mind. Insurance doesn't cover punctures, it seems. Won't be using them again. A pity, as I've been using Arnold Clark in Vinicombe Street for nigh on...well. A long time. 

Walk into winter

Worst summer in 40 years, best October in 20. Or so a local fisherman told me yesterday in the newly refurbished Brae Garage, which is now a shop, off licence and general impersonation of the Tardis, complete with computerised flight deck.
Brae is the nearest sizeable village to our humble hamlet, some 10 miles away towards the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal (the biggest in Europe). And in Brae you can get petrol, LPG ( I have an old gas-fired Volvo and Susan's getting her Jeep Cherokee converted even as we speak) fresh-baked frozen French bread and the papers. Or as they say hereaboots, da peppers. In Brae you can also get a decent meal, a pint, have a swim, a sauna or go to the gym, and there's a six-year secondary school too. Not to mention a brand-new health centre the size of Wick, and a residential care centre for elderly folk, including my mother-in-law. Oil money makes Shetland the last remnant in the UK of the late lamented welfare state. And we're grateful, don't think we're not.
Anyway, glorious October is over, and while November has come in similar shining splendour, I could see a big nasty front approaching from the south east as darkness arrived this afternoon. The clocks have gone back, soon it'll be dark at 3.00pm or earlier, and it's the season of peat fires, home brew, music making and enjoying the weather that's battering the outside of the house.
Must to bed. That's a year of blogging. My 50th birthday is all too close and my knees are creaking. Must be all this typing.

Cars, guitars and alcohol

Last Thursday Alan MacLeod of Mooney's Wake and North star fame put on a multi-faceted event at Mooney's for John Peel Night, along with dozens of other promoters throughout the country.
I was due to spin a few discs as part of the DJ team, but at 5.30 pm Alan called to ask if there was any way I could do a 20 minute live set. As in playing the guitar and singing, something I hadn't done in Lerwick for nigh on a dozen years. Someone had dropped out and he just wondered...it took me all of 15 seconds to say yes.
There was a time, of course, there was a time...when I arrived in Shetland in 1986, I was one of the few people with an acoustic guitar you could just plug in to a PA. I had fitted a Di Marzio transducer into my (much missed) Gibson J40, and with a Barcus Berry pre-amp, it sounded fantastic. Fantastically loud, anyway. I remember my first gig in the isles, a benefit for the Campaign Against Dounreay Expansion at the North Star, and people were dancing to just that single guitar.
After that came the solo album (on vinyl, of course) The Revenger's Comedy, collaborations with Brian Nicholson (including the tape release Stormbound) and our band The Zetland Beat and Rhythm Kings. We played two, three hour sets, wrote our own songs, had a great time, then stopped. I left the islands in 1990 to work for The Scotsman, and music making/performing gradually dried up, with occasional outbreak of performing, mostly thanks to indefatigable supporter and fan Rob Ellen.
Just lately, though, I've been recording some old songs and writing a few new ones too, drawing inspiration from a new guitar (by the great Jimmy Moon), my son James's developing bass-playing skills and the sense that all that effort, all that stuff, shouldn't be allowed to go to waste.
Because so much time, money and energy was spent on music: From my first guitar aged 11 (still got it: a Selmer) through all the others - Guilds, Gibsons, Martins, Fenders, Tokais, Simon and Patricks...the hundreds of songs, the demos and albums recorded, bands formed and deformed, gigs played, tours, drinks consumed, relationships formed and sundered.
And what joy in it. The notion of communicating with an audience, with other musicians, the sheer beauty of acoustic and electric guitars, the noise, the history. The hewing out of something your own, having listened to and loved so much made by other, better performers and writers.
And there we were on Thursday, after a hasty half hour of rehearsal: me, James and Chris Henderson (who happened to drop into the house). We enjoyed it, anyway. And we might do it again. In fact, we will. Because with music, you really can't help it....

Cars, Guitars and Alcohol
Copyright Tom Morton 1999

I had a dobro once, the brass was shining through
I've got a photograph here, I can prove it's true
Scrapper Blackwell played that guitar too

Where did all the money go?
Can't believe I spent it all
On cars, guitars and alcohol

I had a Jaguar, an old XJ12
It looked OK but underneath it was shot to hell
Still those leather seats had a lovely smell

Gibson, Martin, Fender and Gretsch
Turned me into a perfect wretch
I drove that car like a drunken fool
Left it at the bottom of a swimming pool

Now I don't drink any more, but I used to like a shot
A single malt or two, and then I couldn't stop
Filled myself right up to the top

Where did all the money go?
Can't believe I spent it all
On cars guitars and alcohol...

Broken tombolo

This is the world-famous tombolo, or double-sided beach, between St Ninian's Isle and Bigton in the south mainland of Shetland.
On Sunday, for the first time in my experience, the sea had broken through the spit of sand - combination of high tide and stormy weather - though it was still possible to cross to the island, albeit with wet feet.
The long term commercial extraction of sand from the beach has, of course, nothing whatsoever to do with it...