Page 15 - Blog

The Galloway Hoard is an immensely rich and famous assortment of silver and gold valuables from the age of the Vikings. The Hoard was unearthed by metal detectorists, like Mackenzie Crook, in 2014 at Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire. The gold and silver weigh in at some 5kg and some of it wrapped in well preserved textiles from the period.  With ever more cutting edge techniques revealing the fascinating...

Back in the day when I was talking to and filming emerging rock bands in America the stories I heard were all so familiar. A band would sign to a label and get and advance. Every band wanted an advance, but the advance was just a loan against future royalties.  Every time they went into a studio or had a beer in the studio that would be taken off the advance. So even a big band with a $1 million...

As a coastal dweller I am fully aware of the ferocity of seagulls. My next door neighbour has a sign in their house saying: “I’m as happy as a seagull with a stolen chip.” Gulls are both elegant and super flyers, inspiration for the iconic Spitfire war plane, but they are also sometimes a darn nuisance. Recently they disrupted Royal mail deliveries by dive bombing posties delivering letters, but now...

I think the owner of a well known budget airline has been eating far too often at an all you can eat buffet. My favourite used to be a local Chinese restaurant which had a staggering array of goodies, and to be quite frank, not so goodies. Yes one of those eateries where you can watch the clientele stagger to their seat holding plates in danger of collapse from the weight of scran on the plate. Now...

A young woman has got so fed up with modern life that’s she’s remortgaged her house, rented it out and moved into a storage container. The shipping container has been refurbished into a basic home complete with a second hand kitchen and bath, but no toilet. Water is supplied courtesy of nature from rainwater harvesting system, i.e. a barrel and pipe from the roof! The young woman bought seven acres...

The making of fine whisky, the original amber nectar, is incredibly traditional but it’s also an area of innovation and excellence. Fine distillers are forever looking for new ideas to make their product even more delicious and exceptional. And capture more of that whisky connoisseur market round the world. So now one long established Highland distillery has created a new nectar aged in American white...

I hope you like my picture of a member of the thistle family; I have to say that’s some thistle!

Well Sir Andy Murray has finally retired from the tennis tour, the Olympics and the Great Scot is going to spend more time with his four children, three Grand Slam titles and two Olympic Gold Medals. He has been both a pleasure and agony to watch since 2007. I haven’t had too much time to watch the Olympics...

Edinburgh’s iconic Lothian buses have lots of fans, but not many people buy one of the harlequin livery double-decker giants decked out in their  madder, that’s a kind of dark red, and cream livery. But that’s exactly what one Australian couple did! They bought a number 16, a 1960’s Lothian Leyland Atlantean, after discovering it online rotting in a garden, as you do! Lothian Buses can trace its...

Now I was browsing the website of Scottish Farmer, no I’m not a farmer- just farm curious, and I was surprised to see so many farm weddings. One happy couple had covered their tractors in the tartan of the great Doddie Weir and generally it was all kilts a go go. Very warm and uplifting it was. But it’s   because we are deep into the wedding season and hardly a hint of summer rain in any the photos...

It is the season for weddings and did you get your invitation to the wedding of the year yet? Well neither did I, missing out on meeting the 14,000 guest at the nuptials of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, covered in every newspaper in the world and now on this blog. The Ambani wedding is rumoured to have cost some $600 million, which is rather more than mine did in 2015! She is, Radhika not my missus...