The archive

Day Two of the Branch Line Society's big weekend away started at a much more reasonable hour, and I was pleased to find that breakfast and coffee were available at Crewe despite it being Easter Sunday. This set the tone for a nice, easy day's travel which was again focused on points east of here.

I received an email a few days back suggesting that I was neglecting my local music scene in favour of events much further away. It wasn't that polite, but you get the picture. I replied as I have before, that when things locally began to move away…

It's a rare privilege nowadays to wake up in London with time to spare. In fact it's been years since I've stayed with no pressing engagement early on, or a mad dash homewards to contemplate. So this felt a bit special.

One or two people I discussed today's events with thought it excessive to make a 400 mile round trip for a gig. I always stay quiet at such moments, because it's far from the most ridiculous mission I've ever despatched myself on.

It was a strange week for gigs in Glasgow. As ever there was an embarrassment of riches on offer, and when Edinburgh was linked into the equation, it all got very complicated. However, oddly, everything seemed to have focused on Friday evening.

The promise of sunshine yesterday had given way to a damp evening, so I elected to take the bus instead of walking. Lazy perhaps, but I'm on holiday after all! I couldn't see out of the fogged up and grime-covered windows of the bus, and given that…

It had been a bit of a bewildering day or two. I'd practically fled England as things collapsed behind me with the dust licking at my heels like all the best disaster movies. My uncertain employment situation forgotten, somewhere on a train heading…

Having had some uncharacteristically spare time over the holidays, I've made some changes to the site. Firstly, I've found myself wanting to write more about music in recent times, and to blog about the soundtrack to my travels.

Today was something of an afterthought. The way that the Christmas and New Year holidays fell made it possible to have an unbroken ten-day stint off work at the cost of only two days of annual leave. This lured me into breaking my usual rule of…