Aberdeen en route to...

Really straightforward and completely trouble-free trip to Aberdeen this morning, despite late-night trip to Pacific Quay to find out that the Trainline ticket machine was STILL not prepared to give up my tickets (probably some security measure in the runup to the PM's official opening of PQ today). I have to admit that the building looks impressive at night, though apparently all the lights go out automatically if no-one's actually in a working area. Good (but spooky) environmental thinking. And also green is the computer printing - set up so that everything automatically prints on both sides of the paper. It took me ages to realise this was happening, by which time I'd printed everything three times.

Off to Ullapool after the show for an outside broadcast from the Loopallu festival, featuring Mark Radcliffe's band The Family Mahone...get to stay tonight in one of the great small hotels, The Ceilidh Place, which has, if I remember rightly, an 'honesty bar'. Oh dear...

Incidentally, I paid £26 a night for a room in Glasgow which provided unlimited free broadband and a private bathroom, kitchen facilities, tea and coffee, TV, phone but no breakfast. That has to be the bargain of this or possibly last century.

Snaffle Bit

A fairly large amount of last night was spent in the first bar I ever really drank in, the Snaffle Bit in Sauchiehall Street. The Celtic match was watched, Guinness (normal temperature) was drunk, and fractured memories erupted of 1978 lunchtimes spent playing dominoes with the other members of staff at Project Scotland, The Voice of Scottish Construction. Lunch was three pints of beer and two double cheeseburgers in those days. Good grief.

Dinner in my favourite Glasgow Indian restaurant, Sibbo's Delhi Dabba, was excellent as ever. And the cycle back to Maryhill in the rain was....exciting.

Now it's PQ for the final time this week, an encounter with the legendary Bill Drummond about the planned No Music Day, and after the show, a whisky tasting of cheap drams (£3500 a bottle, apparently). I may just inhale.

Cafe society

Ah, the luxury of the internet cafe...or a well run-one, like Sip'n'Surf in Glasgow's Great Western Road. New computers, all the papers,good latte, fine croissants and reasonable rates for printing stuff out.

I know I could just go to Pacific Quay and do all my necessary preparation for the show, but the fact is I like hanging about the west end of a morning. It's the country hick in me - I like to wallow in what the city has to offer! Once Govan turns into the 'media quarter' it is much-mooted to become, perhaps I'll be able to wander from bookshop to capuccino emporium wearing a cycle jacket and carrying a laptop, without well, fear.

But alas, not yet.

Pacific Quay, here goes!

In Glasgow after accompanying Magnus on his first motorised foray onto motorways....and he did well, though my nerves were somewhat shredded at his cavalier attitude towards lane discipline on Dundee's myriad roundabouts. Horrendous delays at the first roundabout coming into Dundee from Aberdeen...and the really odd thing was this: about 75 per cent of the cars queuing on the inside lane were driven by women. There could be various reasons for this: maybe more women commute into Dundee; perhaps women tend to be satisfied with waiting in the inside lane and don't impatiently swerve into the outside to gain some distance; or maybe they read and understood the roadworks sign which clearly stated that the outside lane was closed ahead...

Anyway, I picked up the folding bike at Magnus's flat and zoomed (10 minutes from Maryhill) to Govan and the BBC's new Crystal Palace, which has its official opening bash this week. I won't be there as I have to go to Ullapool for the Loopallu festival. The picture, by the way, was taken by old pal Stewart Cunningham. When you hear the show today, that's where it will be coming from. Or at least, when I speak. The music's still played in from Aberdeen.

Edwyn's return

Edwyn Collin's new CD Home Again is album of the week over at the Tom Morton Show, and excellent it is too. Recorded before Edwyn's two brain haemorrhages, his recovery has enabled him to finish and mix the record, and it contains some of his best solo work, I think.

My old friend and colleague Paul Tucker has made a wee documentary about Edwyn's recovery which goes out on BBC2 Scotland tomorrow night. I've just watched a DVD and found it profoundly moving and uplifting.

And to highlight the return of Mr Collins (who once gave me the most ferociously good-natured roasting I've ever experienced, over an Orange Juice review way back in the mid-80s), here's a wee YouTube tribute from a guy who sounds alarmingly like the great man, but isn't.