The Leaf Blowers of Aberdeen Attack Innocent Pedestrians!

Only now, a good 48 hours after arriving in Castle Greyskull off the Hrossey (Northlink ferry from Lerwick) am I in a fit state to blog. I knew the voyage south would be a stormy one, but nothing prepares you for a Severe Gale Nine hammering in a flat-bottomed boat. Stuff (smoothie cartons, milk, water, a half-eaten muffin)flew about the cabin, and only lying prone for the entire trip, drugged to the gills with Phenergan, saved me from the kind of nausea which, at the time, seems worse than death. As I often say, on the 'plane you think you're going to die; on the boat you wish you were dead.
Mix Phenergan with booze and you can write off half the subsequent week. Even mixed with Innocent smoothies and Flora cholestorol-lowering milk, Monday passed in an ugly chemical haze. And that includes a stumble through the show. I felt like Keith Richards after falling out of his tree. I went back to the hotel with a 12-inch chicken terriyaki Subway and was sound asleep by 6.00pm. That was me until 8.00 next morning.
Tuesday, I was bit more sentient, though attacked by a man with a Stihl petrol-driven leaf-blower who seemed determined to blow all the fallen leaves off the pavement and into the path of motorcycles, cyclists and others who can suffer fatalities from slipping and sliding on them. Oh, and into my face. What a pointless item a motorised leaf-blower is. If you have to shift leaves, surely a rake and a brush would do fine? Far less environmentally damaging, too. Apparently the fans of leaf blowers can shatter into thousands of bits of shrapnel, which are sometimes propelled at a million mph out of the nozzle. I could have been killed.
But I wasn't. And survived a busy and bouncy wee show to go out for dinner with my boss and fellow blogger Jeff Zycinski. Musa, scene of the great Tom Morton 2/Joe West gig (and a return visit due next year)was fantastic. I loved the deconstructed venison shepherd's pie. Talking to Jeff has revitalised my commitment to this blog, by the way, and I'm determined to update it daily from now on. Or at least more frequently. To the blogface!