Skipwatch: Day 2. Plus a horse and a camper van

The Hillswick skipsaga continues. Someone has removed the keyboards, the crash helmet and the computers (if they were ever there; I may have been imagining them) and left the English flag flying proudly over the rubbish. What is the message?

Meanwhile, I have been making my own contribution, courtesy of the Radiocroft's bathroom renovation. I used the camper for bruck-transportation, and wondered briefly about simply equipping it as a luxurious mobile bathroom. But no, I don't think so. It's in for an MOT on Monday, which is cutting it fine for my planned trip south on Wednesday. We shall see...

Meanwhile, the story continues. Oh, and that's a horse.

Among the strangest skip-diving moments I have known

 

I've just checked, and as of this afternoon, it's all still there: three keyboards, a crash helmet, two desktop computers (you can just see the towers) and an English flag (or Cross of St George if you prefer), complete with pole. This is how I found the skip last night, just along from the Radiocroft but with absolutely nothing to do with me. Who dumped the stuff? What story does it all tell? Rick Wakeman's great house-cleaning following his move to Shetland? You decide...

Heylor and Hillswick at sunset

 
 

End of The Baroque Cycle (second time around)

It's not for everyone, but Neal Stephenson's three-volume (nine in some countries) 3000-odd page epic (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) is a truly titanic achievement. I've just finished reading it for the second time, on this occasion in one great continuous and hugely indulgent splurge. I'm itching to re-read the prequel/sequel Cryptonomicon, which I remember as being stunningly good, but MUST RESIST! I have things to do.

The Baroque Cycle is set in the late 17th/early 18th centuries and concerns Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, calculus, alchemy, mathematics and physics, and the establishment of systems of currency. It also deals with slavery, Jacobitism and Whigdom, the end of the Stuarts, puritanism, shipbuilding, surgery, plague, fire, smallpox, clocks,Louis XIV, the manufacture of phosphorus, considerable amounts of sex and loads of violence, laced with a very (post-) modern sense of humour.

It was even better on second reading. Normal life, or what passes for it, can now resume.

Failure of 52-year-old legs during pushbike odyssey

James (17 this month), whose infatuation with carbon-fibre-forked racing bicycles has lapsed of late, decided yesterday to take the Revolution Continental out for a spin. Foolishly, I agreed to accompany him on the trusty Orbit for the 15-mile thrash up to the Eshaness lighthouse and back.

The weather was fantastic (again; in the words of Alistair Reid's wondrous poem Scotland, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it)and initially I was content to lead the way, my SPD cleats working, I thought, well, and James's computer-game-induced unfitness telling. Until he stood up on his pedals and effortlessly surged away from me on his much more limited racing ratios, grumbling that he couldn't actually ride this slowly.

And it got worse. I don't remember the last rise to the lighthouse being that steep. It reminded me of some of those dreadful hills on the Fife side of the River Tay, or on the Carradale road: heart breaking. Or in my case, leg-defeating. I had to get off and walk, cleats or no cleats. Oh, the shame of it!

Never mind. We stoked up on coffee and cake at the Breiwick Cafe and I made it home without further pedestrianisation. Back to the motorbike!

For bikers everywhere, particularly BMW riders (but not if you're easily offended)

All I'll say is that the punchline involves a Harley Davidson...cheers to a senior traffic policeman for sending me this.

Leo Kottke, 12-string guitars, and a wonderful Paul Siebel song

In 1973 I bought, simply as a result of seeing a poster of the cover, Leo Kottke's live album My Feet Are Smiling. This led to hours, days, weeks, years of messing around with open tunings, bottlenecks (including a mild injury sustained while trying to cut the neck off a wine bottle). And the purchase, eventually of a Guild 12-string which I still regret selling. I've since had a Simon and Patrick 12-string and am currently in a kind of guitar-orientated fugue-state (having sold three recently on eBay) which will probably result in the purchase of another double-six. But not an Eko Ranger 12, which, as a 16-year-old, I considered the best guitar in the whole wide world...

As for the song....this is the incredibly poignant Louise, written by the hugely interesting but essentially tragic songwriter Paul Siebel . His excellent and only)albums Woodsmoke and Oranges and Jacknife Gypsy are available as a double pack - try eBay or Amazon.

Kottke, despite a host of trials including partial deafness and tendonitis, is still playing and touring. He is just fantastic. So much acoustic instrumentalism can be samey and tedious. Not Leo.