The expensive grimness of Aberdeen hotels

Took these pictures (Aberdeen remains one of the most atrractive cities in the country, complete with beach, harbour and great glowering granite edifices) last night while scouring Union Street for food (prior to settling on the honey chilli chicken) followed by an extremely disturbed night thanks to the propensity of Aberdeen Young Folk for partying into the not-so-small hours. It was 5.30 am before the last Bridge Street revellers went home. Student night, apparently.

Hotels in Aberdeen are a problem. They're all hideously expensive, even the rubbish ones, especially during the working week. Oil still shouts that it's got an expense account here. So the truly crap place that I'm staying - part of a big chain, dirty, shabby, scruffy, you name it - is £75 a night, Monday to Friday.

In the course of the last seven years I've stayed in almost every hotel in Aberdeen, and in terms of value for money, the best is probably the Premier Inn opposite the Lemon Tree.Same price as Travelodge but on a different planet for quality and service. The two chains nearly merged last year but in the end, it all fell apart. Good.

The Carmelite is a would-be boutique hotel with a nice foyer and restaurant but, in my one and only stay there (£60, cancelled flight, weekend rate) has half-heartedly tarted-up rooms from its previous incarnation as the Grampian. The Malmaison, just opened, will be like all the other Malmaisons - very comfortable, pretentious and overpriced - but it's beyond my reach expense-wise. The Patio down at the beach is, in its cattle-class rooms at least, a badly-designed, very noisy echo chamber. Ludicrously expensive if you're not fossil-fuelled

There are other establishments, of course - too many to mention in a single post. The pub-with-rooms where, when I complained about the absence of a toilet seat, I was accused of stealing it. The truly threatening bed and breakfasts (there are several, and none are cheap). The Copthorne - now getting to over £200 a night, I'm told -used to be nice but very 1970s and too dear to eat in. The Caledonian is OK but again, ridiculously expensive and worn at the edges.

Holiday Inn Express is clean, tidy and well-run but very difficult to get into. I like their no-nonsense all-you-can-eat breakfast too. If you can afford £150 a night. Unbelievable. The Station Hotel by the harbour is a warren and rather frightening.

Anyway, if you have to, go for the Premier Inn, or, if money's no object, Simpson's (which is ultra-dear) or the Malmaison. But for whom is money no object these days?

In Aberdeen (again). Honey chilli chicken noodle chowmein and dragonfly king prawns with spicy dip!

To my favourite Chinese takeaway, just down from the awfulness that is my regular hotel in the Granite City. Secure parking and within BBC budget, though. It's either that or the Salvation Army.

I was amazed the old Suzuki GS1000G (American model, shaft drive, 80s muscle bike) started almost immediately after five months untouched in Stewart's garage. Not only, that, it needed nothing doing before blasting off towards Aberdeen today, fortunately in dry, if very windy weather. And that bulletproof Japanese parallel four never gave a hint of trouble. Much nicer to ride than my last bike, the much more modern BMW R1100R.

The John Gillan gig went well, I think, slightly low on numbers maybe, but a good 100 or so folk. All kudos to Funk Connection (11 of them) for donating their fee to Roxburghe House, the hospice in which John spent his last days.

It was a hard slog for me, playing across an empty dancefloor through loud foldback, plus a Phenergan and NorthLink hangover, to an invisible and largely inaudible audience. The songs are all about the lyrics, really...some nice comments afterwards, though, and it was all in a good cause.

Ridiculous £40 single for the train to Glasgow yesterday, but great to see Magnus. Out to Clydebank to get the bike, and then dinner with Mag and old pals Stewart, Maggie and Gill. First time in the pub during this 30-day bout of sobriety, and the ginger beer and lime went down...reasonably well.

Three and a half hours cold motorcycling at my age (the bloody railway ticketperson asked me if I was eligible for the over-55 discount!) takes a good two hours to recover from. The honey chilli chicken just about did the trick...two days in Aberdeen now to touch base with the TM production team as the show heads inexorably for its seventh birthday...on Wednesday.

Off to the Lemon Tree for the John Gillan memorial gig

Catching the boat tonight to Aberdeen.

Originally, I was transporting James to the National Youth Orchestra rehearsal weekend, which has been cancelled. On the back of that, I organised the collection on Sunday of my Suzuki GS1000 from Stewart's garage in Clydebank, and, when I was asked to m/c and play at the John Gillan Memorial Concert in Aberdeen, I was happy to agree.

Deal was I'd then stay in Glasgow with James and Magnus until Susan brought Martha down to the mainland for her orchestra rehearsals. Alas, we've not found anyone to look after the dogs, so I'm now hastening back across the Great Sea of Separation so Susan and the boys can go gallivanting in (wait for this!) Pisa. The one in Italy.

I get to babysit Lulu.

Oh well. I'm looking forward to the gig tomorrow night, actually, with Funk Connection and Wray Gunn and the Rockets. First live outing for the battered old Fender Malibu I bought recently on eBay.

The gig will celebrate the life of John Gillan, a well-known figure on the north-east music scene, a former Lemon Tree DJ who also worked at Bruce Miller's. All proceeds go to the hospice Roxburghe House.

See you there!

Do not go to this blog if you're interested in 7-inch singles and are even slightly short of time...

...thanks to those nice folk at Electric Roulette, I've been pointed to the truly wondrous So Many Records, So Little Time, blog, which is by someone who Knows About These Things. Edwyn Starr's Agent Double-O-Soul is worth the price of admission alone. All the MP3s are straight from vinyl. And he's right. Wheatus DO rock!

Fog, windylights, Martha in Orkney and a lifeboat cake won in a raffle

CALAMITY! Friday was Brae Up Helly Aa, an event much anticipated by young (14 year old) daughter Martha, who had planned for weeks to attend with her pals. She had worked out that, despite having to get up at 5.00am to catch a flight to Inverness (school council duties, the glamorous modern lifestyle of the school pupil) she would be back by 7.00pm, and ready to party.

But, as Susan and I drove north from Lerwick, the lovely warm weather was chilling down into spectacular fogginess. The Shetland Aerogenerators site was, as you can see, becoming seriously fluffified, and soon Sumburgh was haar-bound. By which time Martha, plus various other school pupils and teachers, were in Kirkwall. Stranded.

Where Flybe put them up overnight in the Kirkwall Hotel, complete with £20 vouchers for dinner. Each, not for the entire flight. It's fair to say that Martha was...not best pleased with this turn of events. But enjoyed smoked salmon, fish and chips and chocolate torte. Many, many thanks to the teachers involved for looking after her, and to Elaine from the SIC for making Flybe provide breakfast!

Marf arrived back safely this morning, bright, breezy and ready for 'da hop' tonight (follow-up dance for survivors of Up Helly Aa) Young people. We picked Susan up from the NorthLink ferry where she'd been helping out at the RNLI coffee morning, and it turned out she'd won a cake!

And very nice it is too...