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January 2008

2007 just flew by. I always remember as a child my Father saying the years go by quicker as you get older, and he's right because each year does seem to pass quicker than the year before. Being busy most of the time helps as the next weekend arrives no sooner than Monday has begun; I master music for about ten hours a day, five or six days per week, so I'm never sitting around wondering what to do, in fact I rarely have the time to do all the other things I want to do.  Sometimes I get people phoning or emailing me needing something mastered, we have a chat about the project and are then surprised I can't do it the same day.  I think it's one of the problems of working at home, this image of being relaxed, loads of spare time and working whenever we feel like it; it couldn't be further from the truth. We've been planning to start a fruit and vegetable garden since we came to Skye in 2002, we are only just getting there. We have an area ready to make growing beds, and a concrete base with water and electricity laid in ready for the greenhouse I bought last August, but of course I haven't had time to assemble it, hopefully soon.

The iPod I mentioned in the June update is great and now has around 14,000 songs on it.  I still prefer to buy the original CD's and load them onto iTunes and the iPod, as I like to have the disc and its booklet to read.  I still enjoy playing the original CD as the quality is obviously better, but for general background music, the iPod on shuffle mode can't be beaten. I'm baffled how it chooses the tracks as there seems to be no pattern; I'm sure I'll find out some day.

The last 3 months have been a little stressful as we've had a conservatory built.  Having builders and fitters around on and off for about six weeks is strange in our peaceful location; all worth while though as we now have a wonderful new space.  The conservatory is quite large, 5 x 5.5 metres and around 4 metres high with a lovely glass gable end looking out to sea, and great views to the hills east and west.  We also have a beautifully designed wood burning stove in there, so it's a really cosy place to sit and read or write this on my superb MacBook Pro laptop.

I've wanted a Apple computer for around five years but kept holding off. I finally made the decision and bought a 17" MacBook Pro last August. I wish I'd done it earlier as it a wonderful piece of engineering, looks and feels beautiful, and the latest 'Leopard' O/S is superb. I also have Windows XP running on it using an application called 'Parallels', which allows you to run several different operating systems at the same time. I wish I didn't need XP but my Royal Mail SmartStamp printing software, FrontPage Web software, and Sage accounts are PC only. I took it out the box and switched on; within a minute, without me doing anything apart from typing my Apple password, it had found my wireless network, gone online to Apple and downloaded my name address etc; I didn't have any setting up to do apart from type in my pop3 and mail@ for my email. I was up and running in less than five minutes; that doesn't happen with a PC. When I got the machine it had the 'Tiger' O/S; the new 'Leopard' O/S was released about six weeks ago. The package it came in was beautiful, good enough to frame and hang on the wall; I put the disc in and one hour and a restart later it was there and running perfectly; something else that's a rarity with a PC. I'm a happy chappie!

Another great thing I did a few months ago was has an FTP server installed, yet another computer!  Two PC's for mastering, one PC for the server, and the laptop; I love my gadgets!  Anyway, during the recent post strike I was happily mastering as people could upload their files directly to me and I could then put a mastered version back on my server for them to download and approve; the strike was soon over and I could post off the manufacturing masters.  In just a few months about 50% of my work is now sent to me and approved via FTP, a few manufacturers accept DDPi format CD master files via FTP too, so there are times when there isn't any hard copy involved until the manufacturing process, amazing!

Our self catering cottage had a busy 2007 with 46 weeks booked, and as I write this piece we already have 31 weeks booked for 2008, so it looks like another busy year ahead.  We are getting a percentage of returning customers, so they must like coming to our cottage and Skye.  We mainly get people from Britain, but last year we had an American couple (who have already booked again for 2008 and bringing one set of Parents along this time), a Swiss couple, several German families, a Dutch family, and couple from Australia.  The cottage keeps my lovely Rose busy with the Saturday changeovers, and the washing and ironing of all the bedding and towels in the week, as well as looking after us and our two lovely cats who are four and a half years old now; fully grown, great hunters and great sleepers too. One or both sleep in my mastering room all day while I'm working, and we normally wake in the morning with both curled up on the bed beside us, sometimes taking up more space then we do!

My son Sam came up for Christmas, his third visit but the first on his own. He's twenty two and starting to see the world; he's off to Barcelona soon to see the place and watch some football. I'm sure, like me, he'll enjoy visiting other countries and soaking up what they have to offer. Sam is into body building and trains intensively; he has a strange diet to feed his muscles and help him get his body to where he wants it.  When he was here breakfast was three Weetabix, a banana, a glass of orange juice, 2 super multivitamin and mineral tablets, followed by eight raw egg whites blended with some milk and drank fairly quickly as he doesn't like the taste; he did the same before he went to bed too.  We had a lot of egg yolks going spare; the whites are good protein but the the yolks are full of cholesterol and bad for your heart.  He did of course enjoy a hearty Christmas dinner of a beautiful free range Turkey with all the trimmings. I've included some photos of Sam and one of him being cuddled on Christmas Day by two of our local radio station presenters, Kate Howard (left), and Morag-Anna McLeod right). There's also a photo me me with the mini accordion, one of my Christmas presents from Rose.

My daughter Sarah and her partner Luke are doing very well and had their second child last Mother's Day, so I'm now a double Granddad, still feels strange to me being a granddad; I'm 55 but don't feel old enough, a boy at heart... photos of Sarah & Archie, and Archie and Noah below. I still love Meccano, Lego, model trains, plastic kits, and all those things I enjoyed all those years ago; one day I hope to have time to enjoy them again.  Earlier last year I went through an odd period where I wanted to collect a lot of the things I had in my youth, so eBay was visited on a regular basis buying various items. I loved Meccano and Lego as a child and think it's what's helped me have a practical mind.  The largest Meccano number 10 set in my childhood years was far too expensive for most families to buy their children, me included, but I now have one; whether I ever make anything with it, time will tell, but it's great to have finally made a dream come true some forty five years later!  I also bought two more lovely mechanical music machines to add to my collection; an original Edison Wax Cylinder player, and a Polyphon which is like a record player but plays large metal discs with little fingers punched into the surface to strike tuned metal rods to make the sounds; a similar mechanism to a music box. My old IBC Studios colleague Peter Fautley and his wife Gwen bought an old valve radio for us; Peter is an electronics engineer so he restored it and they presented it to us when I was best man at their wedding in September 2006.

We were down south in November on a quick trip visiting our families but we made time to drop in on my old friend and fellow masterer George Peckham; George scribed "A Porky Prime Cut" in the run-out area of vinyl, and mine was "Bilbo". George isn't mastering anymore but take a look at his eBay shop Porky's Prime Cuts, you might see something to buy. George and I haven't seen each other for a few years but he's still the same as always, it was like we'd been together yesterday, the years just melted away.  A couple of photos below of the two of us, one in 1976 when I worked with George at the Master Room, and a recent one taken last November; I think we're still wearing well.

Many people have said they enjoy reading what we're getting up to, so I apologize for the often long intervals between the updates, but as I said earlier the time just flies by. Until the next time.

June 2007

While most the country has had heavy rain and floods, we've had some of the best continuously superb weather; three weeks without any rain with generally clear blue skies and the occasional cloud.  The evening skies have been beautiful with superb sunsets around 10pm, yes the sun sets late this far north in the summer.  Our stream and waterfall have dwindled to trickle, but being fed from the nearby hills it doesn't take much rain for the stream to fill and flow rapidly over the rocks and waterfall.. The national weather forecasts never seem to get it right for our area; the Scottish forecast seems to be more accurate but I think our part of Skye often comes off better than the rest.  We're lucky if we get a day of snow each year and virtually never any frost; being close to the sea we do get a breeze which tends to keep us a little cooler; sometimes the wind can be icy and strong, so tender plants don't survive unless they're well protected.  Our friends down south often think we're having bad weather or snowbound but we're often enjoying a lovely day.

I never thought I'd have much use for an iPod but I was wrong.  A few months ago we bought the latest 'Shuffle', which is built in the shape of a clip so you can attach it to your clothing; excellent when you're doing some exercise.  Being only one gigabyte, no wheel, screen and no easy way of finding specific tracks, it soon became a bit of a pain to use, so I bought the latest 80GB iPod.  What a difference, we now have 6500 tracks in it with more to load, and the machine is so well designed, it performs perfectly and is an absolute dream.  I've bought decent headphones for the exercising, and a dock to connect it to the hi-fi in the lounge.  It's transformed the way we listen to music; I love having it on shuffle so I just get whatever it throws at me; some tracks I haven't heard for years and the next track is something I bought last week.  I'm still buying CD's and then importing into iTunes and onto the iPod, but I can see it won't be too long before I'm buying by download.  For general background music while doing other things, I don't mind MP3 at all, and it's so convenient; I know a lot of you reading this have been used to the world of iPod for several years, but it's new to me and I'm so impressed with Apple for coming up with such a superb system.  If you enjoy music and haven't got an iPod, give it a try; I doubt you'll be unhappy.

March 2007

January 2007 arrived and we finally went on a month's holiday to New Zealand that we'd booked 12 months before. We flew down to London from Inverness and on to Singapore the following morning. After a twelve hour flight we touched down to 82 degrees and 85 percent humidity!  Of course everywhere inside is air-conditioned and comfortable, but you just drip as soon as you step outside.  A couple of days later we continued our journey with a nine hour flight to Christchurch on the south Island of New Zealand, 12 hours ahead of Britain. We were on an escorted coach tour with Journey's of Distinction, our excellent guide Robyn Mitchell and our superb driver Michael Robbins, who was overflowing with information, gave us a wonderful holiday.

We packed in a lot of stuff on our tour and got to most of the places worth visiting.  Stewart Island off the south island tip was lovely and often missed off of tour itineraries. Queenstown was a small but vibrant town and we enjoyed our few days there. They had a great bar called Minus 5 which was basically a freezer with an ice bar, ice seats (covered in deer hide), and ice glasses to drink from. It was a cool minus 8.5 degrees on our visit, but you get a thick coat with a hood, slip-over shoes, and gloves to keep your hands warm while holding your drink. It was a great experience and definitely worth doing if you ever come across one.

The north island had some interesting stuff; an active volcano, sulphur pools excreting gases from under the earth's surface, and some beautiful scenery in the northern Bay of Islands. I took seven hours of video which I will attempt to edit down to a sensible 2 hours for a DVD to send out to the family, friends and twelve people who were also on the trip with us.  New Zealand is a great place, and for us we thought it was a larger version of Skye with the same relaxed way of life. It was a strange feeling going almost as far as you can around the world before coming back again but it well worth it and we hope to return someday to visit Australia and possibly even get to Antarctica.

December 2006

Another year is at an end, 2006 has flown by and each year seems to come and go faster than the previous one; if you've ever seen the original 1960 HG Wells 'The Time Machine' film where George (Rod Taylor) sets off in his machine and is watching the days, then years go by with ever accelerating speed; well that's what I'm feeling right now; the previous months are almost a blur.  Rose and I thought we'd slow down up here on Skye but we're as busy as we were down south.  I may be as busy but the pace of life on Skye is much calmer so our days are still a lot less fraught than before.

Downloading and uploading music files is getting more popular, a trend which will be the norm in a year or so.  Someone can finish a track and send it to me via the internet in the morning, I can master it and upload the file back to them by the end of the day.  For those of you who only use your computers for general things, email and a bit of web surfing, it may be hard to understand how we can send professional quality music around the world in minutes, but we do; the technology is improving; it will get faster, easier and save us a lot of time making sure everything is right.

It only seems a while ago that DAT (Digital Audio Tape) became a new and much used medium for recording a master mix to; twenty years later and it's virtually extinct.  Recording engineers started putting their mixes onto CD-R as the medium improved and became cheaper; now CD-R is also dying as DVD-R and hard drives are much cheaper; and as mentioned earlier, I can receive a mix in computer data file format into my mastering system over the internet from the mix engineers computer with no hard copy in existence.  A frightening thought really considering how easy it is to lose that data, but I'm sure hard copies are stored as backups in case of a problem.  Consumer downloads and iPods are killing CD quicker than we thought too; these inventions that were born in the early 1980's will be dead in the next few years, but the humble vinyl disc which many thought would be dead by now lives on, as does analogue recording tape; I mastered two albums in November that were mixed to half inch analogue tape, so I'm pleased I have an excellent Studer A820 quarter and half inch analogue tape machine as a well recorded analogue mix does sound very good.  One of the most asked questions from people asking me to master their music is "can you make it feel more analogue?".  Fortunately I have a lovely Manley Valve compressor/limiter which does warm things up in a very musical way and helps me satisfy my clients request.

As I said the year has flown by and much is a distant memory; however there are a few things worth a mention.  My daughter Sarah (25) and her partner Luke had a baby in February; his name is Noah and he's a lovely little chap who is now walking and getting into everything. Guess what...she's expecting her second baby this coming March!  My son Sam is doing well, he's 21 now, presently still single and enjoying life.  Sam Sarah and Luke came up to see us for a few days back in January, and Sam and his Mum came up again in the autumn.

We were down south in May seeing our families and spending a few days by ourselves in Devon and Cornwall.  Noah was growing rapidly and was wearing a little outfit we'd bought him in 2005 when were in Japan.  While we were in Devon we called in on Simon Heyworth who has a superb surround mastering facility in an out-building on their farm.  Simon engineered the original Tubular Bells album for Mike Oldfield but now concentrates on mastering; primarily SACD and 5.1 surround, many of which I have in my personal collection.  We also managed to see Shawn Joseph who worked with me a Porky's Mastering.  Shawn now has his own mastering facility in Bristol called Optimum Mastering and rapidly earning a fine reputation for CD mastering and vinyl cutting.  Apart from seeing some mastering friends we had a few days in Torcross, a favourite place of ours on the south east Devon coastline.  We always stay at Angie and Paul Lansdale's B&B, right on the sea front and they're lovely people to stay with.  A few more days were spent at the Cottage Tea Rooms in Tintagel, Cornwall, another gem of a B&B; Sandy and Vic really look after people well, and you certainly don't go hungry.  Whilst in Cornwall we went to Dingles Steam Village, which is home to a magnificent collection of steam powered memorabilia; soon to be extended with a fully working steam funfair housed inside a huge hangar; everything at Dingles is inside so somewhere to go on a rainy day.

We went down again in October seeing some clients and catching up with family and friends.  We stayed with Julian and Maureen for a couple of days; met them on our Japan trip last year and have kept in touch; they rented our cottage for a week back in the spring and enjoyed their stay on the Isle of Skye.  While we were with them we all had a day trip to France using EuroTunnel; a very efficient and easy service making a visit to France very easy indeed.  We did a little shopping and had a leisurely meal at a lovely family run restaurant in Sangatte which is just a few miles away form the hustle and bustle of the duty free shops.

I was invited to give a talk on Mastering at York University of Music on October 21st which was part of a regular annual 3 day event called Sightsonic.  The 2006 event focused on TOUCH, a label I master for; Philip Marshall gave a talk on web design, Jon Wosencroft and Mike Harding talked about Touch and related topics and Mike chatted with me about mastering for Touch. Several artists performed each day: Rosy Parlane, Marcus Davidson, Philip Jeck, BJ Nisen, Christian Fennesz, Biosphere and Ryoji Ikeda.  it was a great event and I wish to thank the organisers and Touch for allowing me to be part of it.  The people at York liked my piece and are thinking of having me there again; yes please!  I gave a similar mastering talk earlier in October at the music department of the high school in Plockton, which is just off the southern end of Skye.

One delight was meeting up with my old mastering friend Geoff Pesche. Geoff used to be our bike messenger in the early days of Tape One; Geoff decided he'd had enough of delivering tapes round London and wanted to come inside.  I helped train him to be a disc cutting engineer and twenty six years later he is now top of the tree working at Abbey Road Studios mastering some of the best music available.  We met up with Geoff had lunch in the canteen and a brief tour of the place; I've been there many times but it was a first for Rose. Unfortunately all the studios were in record mode so we couldn't go in, but Rose did get a look into the huge number one studio from a viewing hatch up in its roof.  Geoff took over from Chris Blair who sadly died in late 2005; Geoff now has the mastering room set up just how he wants it, and I think he's the happiest he's ever been.  I feel very proud of his achievement had I am so pleased to have helped him from the start of his mastering career.

We also dropped in on Ray Staff, another fine mastering engineer; I say dropped in but should really say 'went up to see him' as he's on the 29th floor of Centrepoint at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and New Oxford Street.  Ray used be the mastering engineer at the famous Trident Studios in the 1970's, then spent many years at CBS's Whitfield Street Studios, later owned by Sony.  Ray now does fine work at Alchemy Soho; he has a great sounding room designed by Sean Davies, another old friend; but apart from having a superb room, Ray also has one of the best views east across London and beyond.

We also caught up with David Tibet and his wife Dri at their new home.  They lived in my home town of Walthamstow for a while, then moved up to Glasgow but have now settled on the south coast. I master David's band Current 93 along with some other the other artists on their label.  Caroline Bonnett produces and compiles releases for Kingsway, a Christian Record label I've been mastering for since 1969. We met up with Caroline at Orange Room Music, a recording studio in Newhaven while she was overseeing the recording of an album by Nick Fletcher which was the first thing I had to master when we got back home.  We enjoy seeing people on our travels and we try and fit in around three different visits each day we're down but it is exhausting, and of course I generally come back to a load of mastering that's been patiently awaiting my return, so we then feel we need another holiday to get over the one we've just had!

A local band who I'm trying to point in the right direction is Stereoglo, a great 3 piece band from Skye. I've mastered two singles for them so far and I managed to get the main track of their latest release 'Can't Wait to Meet You' mixed by Jon Kelly, a great engineer and producer who has his own facility in London. After Jon had mixed the track I chopped the intro in half to tighten up the track into the vocal; I then speeded the track up slightly giving it a little more of a kick; and then to finish off I added some phasing in a couple of places to add a little psychedelic appeal which I think gives the track that little extra boost. The phasing I add was no cheap electronic gizmo, the effect is produced by playing the track twice on different machines at the same time with me vari-speeding one of the versions to create the phasing effect; these two signals are then blended together as a new track on a third machine; I then edited the bits I wanted into my original mastered version and the job was done.  As you see mastering can also be more than getting a good sound; sometimes I might hear something in a track, I talk this over with the artist or producer and we may do a little something extra to improve things.

I have been co-presenting a show on CuillinFM, Skye's local radio station;  I'm on once a month on Sundays between 10.30am and 1pm with Andy Mitchell.  We chat about all sorts and I play tracks that I like but also try to play things that aren't heard that often; it's great to come up with something good that's been forgotten along the way.  The show also gives me an opportunity to let people hear some of the new tracks I've been mastering, but I always get the artiste's permission first as sometimes what I'm involved with doesn't get released for several months and may need to be kept under wraps.  I've also made some one hour programmes at home which get repeat broadcasts from time to time. I made one about Stiff Records and another about the Immediate label; I am presently putting one together about the Fledg'ling Records label with an interview I recorded with its owner David Suff who we met up on our October trip; I speak with David frequently as I'm often mastering something he's involved with, but I haven't seen him since we moved to Skye so it was great to meet up again.  I also want to make a programme about Kirsty MacColl and was intending to meet up with Kirsty's brother Calum in October but he was away recording so we missed each other.  I master for Calum's label which is called MVine; they haven't been around long but are slowly building up a great roster of artists including Boo Hewerdine, Christie Hennessey, The Slides and Hafdis Huld, a great band from Iceland.

Teeny's Cottage our self catering holiday home here on Skye had a really good 2006; it's been full for 42 weeks which is great, and bookings for 2007 are starting to come in; we've had a few people back for second visits and we hope the good level of bookings continue.  In September I was best man at the wedding of my friend Peter Fautley to his lovely bride Gwen.  Peter was one of the technical staff at IBC Studios when I was there in the late 1960's and early 70's; we lost touch but found each other via the internet a few years back and now the four of us get together at regular intervals for lots of chat and yummy dinners.

We hope 2007 will be a good year for us and all of you...and I hope it won't take me another twelve months before I update this page again.

November 2005 - Japan

Again the year has almost dissolved into past memories, one moment it's January and the next we're wrapping presents and getting ready for another Christmas!  Since the last update we've been as busy as ever, work for me has been pretty much non stop, we moved thinking I'd slow down but I'm still mastering all sorts of music around 10 hours a day, 5 or 6 six days per week; I can't complain as it allows me to have the best equipment for my craft, and living on Skye gives me a less stressful time than I had down south.  Our self catering cottage has had a very good season, it's gradually getting known and people are starting to come back for return bookings; see www.teenyscottage.com for more information.

In  May we spent a few days touring round some of our favourite Yorkshire spots, We drove down to Middlesbrough to see our friend Alyson and then drove down the coast road from Redcar to Whitby, a very picturesque journey with some some lovely towns and villages on the way.  Whitby is always good and when you get a serious downpour with thunder and lightning while walking round the graveyard on the hill bring Dracula even closer!  We do like the old steam trains so visiting Goathland and Grosmont for the North Yorkshire Moors Railway is something we always look forward to; unfortunately we didn't have time to travel on it this time as we wanted to visit one we hadn't been to before. This was at Alston and is a great little narrow gauge railway and an excellent model railway exhibition close by.  We then drove down to visit our friend Troy Donockley and his family Terri and Mia; Troy's great for a few magic tricks (you will be amazed); check out his music at www.troydonockley.co.uk  From Troy we travelled up to Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a few days, staying at great hotel in the centre. Newcastle is a stunning place these days, vibrant, loud and great sights along the Tyne. The Sage is a beautiful venue so do go and see for yourself.  On our way home we went to Lindisfarne which is great, remember to check the tides as the causeway is the only way on or off . We continued north via Leith (hello Proclaimers), Edinburgh, across the bridge and on to Mallaig where, for a change, we got the ferry back to Skye. May is also the time for the Paddle Steamer Waverley to visit Skye for a few days www.waverleyexcursions.co.uk  We had such a great day's cruise from Portree south round Skye to Mallaig and back, we spent the following day on another one up past Raasay to Loch Torridon and back.

In October we had our big holiday and flew off to Japan; we'd booked it over a year before so it was great the time had finally come.  The holiday with Great Rail Journeys was superb taking us over much of Japan from small rural towns, Miyajima island, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Tokyo.  Japan is a wonderful place and the people are some of the friendliest, helpful and courteous folk on the planet, a great lesson in life.  There were 30 in our party and everyone got on fine making it a fun time, we all made some new friends and had a wonderful holiday.  Travelling on the bullet trains (Shinkensen) was a great experience; the fastest 700 series is a stunning vehicle to travel on, unbelievably smooth and so fast; unfortunately our trains don't even come close; even the smallest local trains are spotlessly clean, on time and a pleasure to travel on.  We were lucky enough to see Mount Fuji with snow on it; it's peak is often covered in cloud so seeing it in all its glory was a bonus.  The last four nights were spent in Tokyo, a city to be amazed by.  So many people, so many shops but completely ordered business; generally people stay to left side of the street in one direction so none of the battles we have here on our busy city streets, the masses pass each other with ease and everything has a calmness. Technology is advanced, many things are available in Japan that we're still thinking about; Blue Ray DVD Recorders are on sale and 50GB blank discs for around £40.  Another thing we noticed were that the vehicles exhausts seemed quieter and there was less pollution too, something else we need to look at. A novel thing in Japan are the toilet seats! Heated, with little tubes that spray warm water at the appropriate areas to clean you; cuts down on the loo roll and feels great!; there are of course traditional Japanese toilets that are at ground level so you have to be good at squatting.  The food was great and the sushi bars were excellent; people say Japan is expensive and can be, but you have your choices, even the cheapest noodle bars serve great food and there are so many places to choose from with endless menu choices. Clothes are expensive Japan but the electronic stuff in store is about the same as buying online here. I took a new Sony High Definition video camera with us so will have to find time to edit all the footage; we can watch it in HD on our 50 inch Pioneer HD Plasma screen but will only be able to make regular DVD's for the families; I hope it won't be too long before Blue Ray recorders are available here because the picture quality is stunning.  Our flight home was almost cloudless, so the views over northern China and Siberia were amazing,  Alas our holiday was soon over and we're back to beautiful Skye and our busy lives; Christmas is almost here and another year rolling in.  Rose and I wish you all a happy Christmas and great 2006.

April 2005

The months fly by at an alarming rate, spring is here and summer's just round the corner.  The big event of recent months is Rose and I got married; we've been together since April 2001 and felt the time was right...so we did!  Being so far from all our families we decided it best to keep the wedding small and only invite our neighbours Ruby and Alan McAlister, plus our professional photographer friend Phil Gorton.  Ruby was one witness, and Phil the other, plus doubling as the photographer.  Phil only lives a few miles away, moving up from Hackney about a year after us; he is in the process of setting up a gallery to show and sell his very individual photographs; have a look at his website www.philgortonstudio.demon.co.uk.  We were married at Portree Registry Office on February 14th (Valentine's Day), had a relaxed lunch at the Cuillin Hills Hotel, then spent a few days on the North West coast of Scotland, staying at the Applecross Inn (well known for it's excellent food), and onto Ullapool for a couple of days at the Ceilidh Place; again, excellent food, very comfortable and a well known live music venue; David Ogilvy, one of my clients, played there the week after our visit, and we've just been there again to see the Christian Garrick Quartet, who I also master for; a bonus being David Gordon was playing piano, yet another of my fold!  Chris, David and the rest of the band are great Jazz musicians, so we had a wonderful evening being entertained by them.  I filmed the wedding and some of our honeymoon so I could make a DVD to give to our families when we visited them a couple of weeks later.  We popped in on painter friend James Hawkins and his wife Flick; I've been collecting his work for several years, stunning stuff; they also came to see Chris Garrick and were truly impressed.  We managed to go right up to Durness on the north west tip of Scotland, home of the Balnakeil Craft Village where the Lotte Glob gallery is based, someone else's work I've collected over the years.  If you like pies, savoury or sweet, check out Lochinver Pies, probably the best you'll ever eat!  Order from their website, or if you're in the area they have a great eatery for lunch and dinner. The Scottish islands, Skye and the north west of Scotland is full of wonderful places, stunning views, open space, clean air and pace of life that allows you to breath like never before.

Our builders have returned once more, demolishing one of the sheds, shortly replacing it with new 6 x 5 metre metal one; once that's done we'll empty out the other shed and demolish it leaving a better view out to sea from the cottage.  We've also had a cattle grid installed to stop sheep wandering in; we like the sheep but they eat all the plants and leave their droppings everywhere.  Now the grid's in we can start planting a few shrubs and hopefully get the vegetable garden under way.

We've had my old school mate Jeff Simonds and and his wife Margaret up for a few days; it's their second visit and we had a great time seeing more of Skye's interesting places.  Jeff and I spent a while one evening star gazing, I borrowed our neighbour Alan's telescope and managed to see the Orion Nebula, Jupiter, plus two of its moons, and Saturn; there are no street lamps around, so you can see so much more of the night sky here than from many places in Britain.  This weekend we have Barry Esson and Bryony McIntyre up from Edinburgh and had a great meal last night at the Loch Bay fish restaurant; Barry runs the Instal music weekend in Glasgow every October, and is also organising a similar event at the Sage in Newcastle this coming May www.musicloversfieldcompanion.org/, not your average rock and roll but certainly expands your understanding of music in a variety of interesting forms. Our self catering cottage is rapidly filling up for the summer, and I'm as busy as ever with my mastering.  The grass is beginning to grow again so the strimmer and mower will soon splutter into life to keep our acre trimmed, plus we've made a raised flowerbed from railway sleepers, but haven't yet had time to buy all the plants to fill it; life on Skye is wonderful just not enough time to get everything done as quickly as we'd sometimes like, but Skye has its own pace, so we're not as rushed as you tend to be down south; up here things happen at their own speed and we just go with the local flow now; Skye time...slowly.

September - October 2002 - Skye Mastering - a new beginning

At the time of writing this, we'll have  been on Skye for seven weeks, and the time has just flown by.  You may think moving 700 miles north west an odd thing to do, but we're loving every minute.  Many of my clients are happy to send me their work to master.  The regular post here is very good, so we haven't found the distance a problem.  In fact, couriers have been slower than the regular 1st class post.  A recent delivery back to Canada was three days quicker by Royal Mail Swiftair, than it was when sent to me by courier - and a 6th of the price too!  There's lots to do here getting the place how we want it, so the next couple of years will see many changes to our new home.  We get amazing skies here, lovely colours, and the cloud shapes seem more variable than in the south of England. We have a stream running through our land with a lovely 4ft waterfall.  One project is to make this much more of a feature.

The first three pictures show what lovely skies we get.  The first is an evening shot, and the third was taken at 7.30 in the morning.  The picture with the double rainbow is the view we get from all the rooms at the front of the house.  Picture five shows the area around us (you may need to zoom in a bit to see things).  The house just to the right of centre is our nearest neighbour.  The trees centre left by the road is the front of our land (we have about an acre), and the house furthest to the left is the original croft, which is is also ours, and the rear of our patch.  The building in the middle of our plot shows the  tool shed (black), garage (red roof), and our main house is just visible behind it.  There is another building which you can't really see at all, but we intend to convert this into a craft shop for Rose to run.  The next four pictures are our views in every direction.  The first of these show the islands of Harris and Lewis (The Outer Hebrides) way off in the distance.  Have a look on the location map to see where they are.  The path in the centre of the picture is the original main road, now used as a path.  The main road, the A850, is the one on the left.  The last three are of our stream and waterfall.  The stream runs the whole way across the northern end of our land, about 50 yards in front of the house, down where the trees are in the picture of the house and surrounding area.

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