The Deep North

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Hey there world. Been a long time. A long lonely time. Ain't blogged since last year, and now it's getting dark again at night and the narrow road to the deep north is getting colder.

But it's been a good old northen summer for me, and that brings a smile to my face. My daughter turned eight this week, and that makes me feel strange. When did I become some middle-aged bloke with no hair and an expanding waistline? Must've blinked and missed it.

My wife's parents have just come off the ferry from the Orkney isles, and they were amazed to see whales in the sea around the ferry. This is the deep north, and few know it better than the whales out there...

People say whale song is soothing and lonesome and all those other charming new age epithets. For me there are only two lonesome sounds worth recording: an early summer curlew at twilight in Caithness, and a freight train running through the southwestern American night. If you know better, don't tell me...

I've decided that blogging in the deep north must be a winter pastime, for when the nights are long and even us hardy souls begin to miss the light nights of summer.

So after a weekend of surprisingly heavy snow I'm in the house with the heating turned up (might as well be burning money, not oil). And the product of all that was one of those google sessions that led me round some pretty obscure 80's indie bands (The Shop Assistants, The Fizzbombs, The Flatmates, The Cateran) til my head swam.

I did like the Cateran. Possibly because they were from Inverness, and they released some pretty sparky stuff. According to one site they were Scotland's answer to Husker Du, which puzzled me slightly, so I had to go back and re-listen to both Cateran and Husker Du stuff. Little Circles was the Cateran's LP I owned, and Last Big Lie the 7" single I really liked. And it still crackles in all the right places, driven by the bass of the late Kai Davidson. He was by all accounts a pretty remarkable man: influential, friend to Nirvana, manager of the proclaimers. And when I listen back to Husker Du's New day Rising LP (still my favourite) I can see what they mean. Same urgency, same bleak impact.

I never saw The Cateran live, and was surprised during my internet trawl to find that a work colleague of mine was Kai Davidson's brother. It is indeed a small world etc etc.

Deep into November in the north we will put on some more supposedly obscure music and see where it takes us next....

technology's sometimes a great thing. Mostly not, but sometimes it offers you that wee door to somewhere you'd either forgotten existed, or simply hadn't dreamed of visiting.

So converting old vinyl and cassettes to MP3 seems on one level to be monstrous. A desecration of the old to make way for the conveniently new. Portable record collections, everyone? Actually, yes! don't mind if I do!

So I've been furiously converting old tapes by Violent Femmes, Long Ryders, Frank Black, Son Volt, The Specials and hundreds of vinyl 7" and 12" records by the Fire Engines, orange Juice, TV 21, Our Favorite Band, The Miracle Legion, Guadalcanal Diary etc. Joy!

Great to be able to walk the streets with old music in my ears, and even more of a thrill to have some local bands on there. Radio City, The Blonde Brothers (hello James) The Naturals, Barracuda Boogie Band and genevieve. The latter are a good case in point. Genevieve made one 12 or 13 track demo about 10 years ago but as far as I'm aware thay never made it out of the studio at Murkle bay Sound. So all that remains is a sparse, haounting collection of alt-country ish songs, and the too often typical fate of local bands: a short burst of something, then gone again in a puff of smoke.

So when they finally make "the Best Caithness Album in the World....Ever!" I'll have prepared my own short list already. Wanna know who'll be on it? Okay:

Radio City (both Love and a Picture and She's a Radio)
The Blonde Brothers (probably Talk to you on the Phone)
Ian Sinclair/ After Hours (Transportation or A9)
The Naturals (Strange Days)
Nancy Robertson/Foggo (the first Caithness record!)
Bobby Coghill
Addie harper
Karen Steven
Boss Hogg
Genevieve (White Courtesy Phone)
J Fatts (Smoke up the ganja?)
something from Alistair Wordie (Cheorge, anyone?)

So there you go: probably the least popular selection of artistes ever. Place your orders for the DRM-free download NOW....

We all live in little bubbles. Sometimes they protect us from the bad, scary or overly real things in life. Sometimes that protection lasts so long we forget it's there, and begin to take our lives for granted. Who wouldn't?

But of course it doesn't last, and when the bubble is pierced it always seems like the first time again, and it's all so unfair and nobody else can imagine what it's like etc etc.

So as everyone celebrates the season of happiness, joy, rampant 21st century consumerism (nice rant on "Extras" Mr Gervais) I would like to pause and offer a thought for the wonderful Phil O'Donnell.

Who? I hear you ask. No, not a pop star, nor a film star, nor indeed any kind of star by his own measure. But one of my heroes nonetheless.

Phil was the captain of Mothwerwell Football Club, playing in the Scottish Premier league, and enjoying probably the best season in the last decade of his career. He started his career at Motherwell, then got a big move to Celtic, and afterwards to Sheffield Wednesday. But he returned to great acclaim for an indian summer at his old stomping ground. During Saturday's League game with Dundee Utd he was being substituted when he collapsed on the pitch. It took the two clubs' doctors and ambulance staff quite a while to get him to the point where he could be stretchered off with an oxygen mask on his face. His nephew, David Clarkson, also plays for Motherwell (so Phil is "Uncle Phil" to all players and fans) and had just scored two great goals. Phil's wife and four kids were in the crowd watching the game.

Once he'd gone off the game continued, and everyone assumed he'd be taken to hospital and treated. At 5.18pm on Saturday night Phil was declared dead in hospital in nearby Wishaw. He was 35 years old.

I wasn't one of the 5,000 spectators who witnessed Phil's last moments. But I turned up at Fir Park the following morning, along with hundreds of others, including ex-playing colleagues, to mill about in bewilderment at the senselessness of it all. We didn't stay long (me, my wife and my 6 year old daughter) as we had the long driver to Caithness ahead of us. But the Narrow Road to the Deep North seemed a little narrower and darker after that.

OK, lots of people pass away at Christmas time, and lots of others are in terrible circumstances. But losing a good, honest public figure like Phil seems different. Being around grown men (and lanarkshire men at that) weeping openly in front of the main stand speaks volumes for a quiet man whose influence spread wider than most of us had realised.

So when you're counting down to 2008 tonight, spare a thought for all those with other things on their minds, and remember. We all live in little bubbles......

It's not quite deep and dark December, but it's beginning to feel like it. The streetlights on by 4pm, and last week's storm (slates flying off our office roof like errant fireworks) are both signs that we should be entering that twilight zone of existence where we go to work and return home in the dark.

I spent an unpleasant 2 hours today watching Scotland crash out of the European football championships to a last-minute goal from Italy. It's not the losing that hurts, it's the taking part...

But nobody has died (yet) and the world keeps turning. Funny, that. Every bar in this town at the end of the narrow road to the deep north of Scotland has been full of hopeful fans, all of us bought into the national myth of success-against-the-odds. We should all be tattooed with it at birth.

But maybe it's time we were better equipped to deal with success, rather than to heave sighs of relief at glorious failure. I'd rather spend time worrying about whether my good freen' and his family are safe and well in Phnom Penh than on whether my country is a country.

From the deep north, in the deep winter, a warm welcome to the rest of the globe's bloggers and lovers and fighters and thinkers.

We've been on a family holiday to Fuerteventura, where we shared a lovely week with several families of cockroaches and an even greater congregation of ants. I walked up and down the seafront with my postbox red "Brims Ness" surf T-shirt glaring at the surfer dudes riding the puny waves. Huh! I live in Thurso - I scoff at your semi-tropic surfy action! Come to where the real men and women surf!

Landing at Edinburgh we drove north through the night and nearly crashed whilst watching the stars spread out above us. Wee glimmerings of aurora borealis as we headed up the coast. As my eyes became heavier and heaveier I came up with a new use for those annoying electronic roadside sign boards that UK trunk roads have grown like cancers - instead of the turgid instructional nonsense such as "tiredness kills - take a break" (what, in Drumochtar at 11.55pm?)or "don't take drugs and drive" (take them where? over the border?) why don't we ask for a more uplifting set of messages? I'm thinking that simple ones might be "don't worry - be happy" or "a stitch in time saves nine". But going further we might even have the odd line of poetry or song, or perhaps some short philosophical maxim.

So I'm picturing the A9 road at night, with its electronic scoreboard-type screens saying "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".

I think it would catch on....

It's official - the orkney blues festival is alive and well! It's now called the Orkney Blues Weekend, and I'm just back from an enjoyable couple of days with the After Hours Rhythm & Blues Revue. Playing in a ten piece band like After Hours can be chaotic, it can be depressing, but sometimes it all comes together and the world seems like a more pleasant place for a few hours....

So, whilst the patrons of the Ferry Inn (Friday 21st) and The Stromness Hotel (Saturday 22nd) might not agree, we thought we were in pretty good form. Our usual fair share of dody starts and dodgier endings (and few middles that left a wee bit to be desired) but by God you can't fault us for sheer dogged enthusiasm!

It makes life so much more bearable when you play in front of a crowd for whom listening to live music is not (a) a background distraction (b) a boring drone or (c) just a noise. It's also refreshing to have around you other bands and musicians who are genuinely keen to talk and share the craic.

We're only a 1.5 hour ferry ride away from Stromness, but when it's the end of September and the equinox is upon us, you need to take the rough with the smooth. The good ship Hamnavoe is a sturdier vessel than its much loved predecessor the St. Ola, but we still rolled like a drunk coming home from the pub as we crossed on Friday night. The lights of Stromness are a welcome sight to the seasick traveller.

It is almost mid-summer on the north coast, and the rest of the UK has been suffering from flooding on a major scale. Looking back at a week of sunshine it's hard to imagine the rest of the country battling with the elements. Usually it's the other way around...

So the lambs and calves have been having an easy time of it (no snow or gales to contend with) and the kids are enjoying the last two weeks before the summer holidays.

I love this time of year. From our back garden you can listen to the oyster-catchers and the curlews in the field. The sounds of summer in the north...: