My sagging seat

My Brooks B17 is, oddly enough, 17 years old. It was bought for my first Orbit, a glorious Reynolds 531 ST tourer, a Gold Medal Alivio. I still have that particular velocipede, all hand-brazed, double-butted, entirely Sheffield made, lugged to within in inch of its super-comfortable life. The finish on the original bike was appalling, the paint flaking off at the slightest impact. It's been resprayed in satin black and looks a treat. It hasn't been ridden for three or four years.

But this saddle...it was broken in over punishing, main road trundles between Cromarty on the Black Isle and Inverness. It lurked, covered with a plastic bag, on the bike rack of many camper vans, including the infamous sewage-leaking Fiat that was parked in the BBC Highland grounds for a year. It has been to Orkney, it has covered the 330-mile epic from Hillswick to Campbelltown, it has suffered canal towpaths, the Tay and Erskine Bridges, and my increasing weight...

This is the perfect saddle. Perfect for me, that is. The most comfortable seat a man could have. What nobody understands, it seems, about bike saddles is that they should be slippy. Those sticky gel things are a nightmare of chafing over a long distance. The worn smoothness of the Brooks, coupled with its gradual moulding to my exact, ah, proportions, makes it as much a of a joy as an overweight, unfit bottom can have aboard a bike.

Five miles on Sunday. Nothing like so much pain and angst as Saturday's creaking return to the diamond frame. Pint of lager on my return. Tasted great (Stella 4 per cent) but it probably outweighed any fitness gain. But hey, life's too short. Isn't it? I'm a drinking, fat-eating cyclist. And my life is in that somewhat saggy saddle. Pass the Thorntons mini-caramel shortcake...

Some small regrets at missing T in the Park

...not seeing Edwyn Collins perform with Malcolm Ross; not seeing Dave play with Paolo; not seeing Nick Cave. And missing a live performance of this titanic song:

It's been nagging at me for weeks...why Bruce undoubtedly owes a debt to Cat Stevens and the Tremeloes

I think it was Camy or Kev, regular listeners both, who mentioned that Springsteen's My Lucky Day, from his most recent album Working on a Dream, was reminiscent of...something else. I'd been thinking the same thing for weeks. And tonight, after a bit of trawling through Google and YouTube (I could hear those words, 'in the midnight, moonlight hour') I found it.

Except Here Comes My Baby is twenty times the song My Lucky Day is. It has, for example, not just a proper chorus, but one that soars and develops through three separate sections. It's a genuinely joyful, pop classic. Springsteen just repeats (and repeats and repeats) the same seven-note riff that comprises Here Comes My Baby's first line.

Cat Stevens, AKA Yusuf, AKA Yusuf Islam is, without doubt, one of the great pop songwriters. Matthew and Son, here Comes My Baby, Father and Son, Moonshadow, Bitterblue and if nothing else, The First Cut Is the Deepest. Springsteen, an avowed fan of the British beat boom, would most certainly have known the Tremeloes version of Here Comes My Baby, maybe even have performed it. Any bootlegs out there?

Anyway, compare and contrast. The studio footage, where Springsteen asks for 'a retro feel', is particularly revealing.

Fabulous idea, beautifully done, lovely performances

Thanks to Andrew McConnel for pointing me in this direction.
Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.
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Deadhead sticker on a...Talbot Express camper

One hundred and one miles from Dufftown, the Grateful Dead stickers began to take hold...

Here's my newly-acquired Talbot Express Sheldon camper conversion, bought off eBay and collected over the weekend in my first ever two-nights-on-the-ferry-in-succession Lerwick-Aberdeen-Lerwick dash.

I know, I know. Not a VW. But for a VW, even a T25, in this kind of condition (rebuilt, resprayed, cared and cossetted) you'd be paying at least twice what I shelled out for this. No anthropomorphism. No names. Well, OK, the Pug, then, as it has that kind of look about it. And despite it being a Talbot, the last owner carefully sourced and applied a Peugeot badge to the front. It being, he says a Talbot-Peugeot.

We're planning a wee trip to Uists in August, and some gadding about Shetland before that. As for those Grateful Dead stickers....they add a certain sort of Electric Kool Aid Acid Test vibe, don't they? Comes of listening to American Beauty last night.

Views from the kayak on a supernaturally still night

I wish to wholeheartedly recommend the Bic Ouassou sit-on-top kayak. So far this year, I have been out on the water more than in the past five years put together. It's stable, safe, robust (rotary-moulded polythene) and above all, easy to use.No faffing about with bad outboards and heavy, leaky boats. And it was cheap too.

Anyway, out tonight from about 21.40 until 22.30, on a night so calm you could see the sandeels' ripples. And so could the tirricks, who came plummeting down like mini-gannets, hitting the water like aerial torpedoes.

St Magnus' Bay was ridiculously still. Sitting in the kayak was like sitting on a rock. And, to quote The Other Bruce (Cockburn) the sun went down, looking like the eye of God.

By the way, these photos were taken on a fairly basic phone, a Samsung Solid. Which I can say without fear of contradiction, is splashproof. Not to say immersion proof.

To the peat hill! To the kayak! Warning - this blog contains shorts and red shoes

On a night like this, one's thoughts in Shetland turn, inevitably (and in our case with considerable guilt) to the peat hill. Three banks cut (not by us - our friend Lornie did the heavy tushker work), half-raised (by us, slowly) and drying out so fast in this weather that nearly everyone else has their peats bagged and home.

It's back-breaking toil, with only a few minutes' winter fuel in every single turf turned. But with the new Haas und Sohn stove, and the price of oil...we're not alone in making a commitment to local carbon fuels this summer. And before you make accusations of profligate carbon abuse, remember this is (in Shetland's case) a local (a mile away) fuel and in almost infinite supply if not extracted commercially.

So to the peat hill. Susan insisted that my shorts-and-red-All-Stars mid-life crisis get-up be recorded. Fashion statements are crucial on the hill. And then she went kayaking...

The Gaslight Anthem, live with Bruce...

This is The Gaslight Anthem's best song, and it has to be said that Bruce adds not very much to it other than his charisma, dodgy backing vocals and a very competent guitar break. Hell, that's enough! In terms of anointing the inheritors, it's surely significant. And thrilling for all concerned. See it here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/2009/artists/gaslightanthem/index.shtml#emp

Hot days and nights in Shetland...

Fantastic, almost unprecedented weather in Shetland. Too hot to go out yesterday! Today was the Mavis Grind Foy...where else can you get a seafood platter (skate, smoked mackerel, mussels and fresh salmon) for £4? Mavis Grind is a narrow isthmus where the North Sea meets the Atlantic. From Viking times until the 1950s, it was used as a short cut, with boats being dragged over the land from sea to sea in order to avoid the sometimes ferocious conditions around the northernmost part of North Roe. The pictures include a view over South Whiteness on Shetland's west side, and a shot of the sky taken at 12.45am today from our house.

Yesterday, one of Susan's registrars, a doctor from Barbados, said it was 'too hot' and very like home...