GBP
Highlands
Happy Friday everyone & hope you're all keeping well & healthy.
I've spent the last 10 days in a beautiful corner of Scotland, in the county of Sutherland. It's the furthest North I've been in the UK & brought back some lovely memories of one of our first British tours. Matt joined TJF on Christmas Eve 2008, we phoned him with the news that we wanted him to be our Bamalam & that we should get ready for our first show together (Maida Vale Jan 2009!). We had dates in Paris booked & in March our first full length UK tour together.
In March we played Inverness if I remember correctly on a Sunday night & arrived very late after getting lost in the Scottish lanes. It was just the 3 of us in a little transit van & I remember Matt was chronicling the days by filming everything on his camcorder. Maybe one day we'll share some of that early footage. We'd decided to go on a little diversion to Loch Ness on the journey North & being without map or GPS we'd got really lost trying to get back on the road to Inverness. We stopped a nearby bus & the driver was so sweet & told us to follow him all the way back to the A9 ❤️
Very late to the show & such a quiet gig. I regret that we didn't go back to Inverness on later tours, I would love to someday.
I'll write about our first show in Aberdeen someday, that was a very memorable night of Boy George and fire extinguishers.
Travelling beyond Inverness this time & I've been smitten by the Highlands. I've been staying on the doorstep of the Forsinard Flows, a huge area of blanket bog, dotted with little pools and larger lochs. It's busy with Red Deer and I would love to come back in the Spring/Summer when the frogs & dragonflies come alive. It's stirred my imagination & got me writing again.
Do any of our friends here speak Scottish Gaelic? I started learning on Duolingo and it's beautiful.
https://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/forsinard-flows/
