White Winter Hymnal

The other day my friend Paul Pike was good enough to forward this item on to me: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/most-desirable-place-to-live-britain-isle-of-skye-devon-a7422051.html Of course, I agree wholeheartedly with the consensus expressed. Indeed, upon learning of it my first reaction was one of giddy over-exuberance. That, coupled with an urge to share the news as if it were that of a bouncing new-born and I the proud father. And then I calmed down. On reflection, I suspect it was the word 'desirable' that dampened my fireworks since I really don't care for its use in this context. It seems to me too twee and smug; stockbroker-belt tidy and bringing to mind cream teas and the sound of leather upon willow. Whereas in my mind Skye is wild and not for taming. It has its own particular beauty for sure, one that gets into your bones and seeps down to your soul. But it can as well be a roaring, howling beast, forever unsettled and unpredictable. It is sensuous and evocative, raw and thrilling much more than it is plain old desirable.

Or perhaps I am being an inverted snob and terrible ponce, and certainly not for the first time. At all events, winter's shroud has fallen across the island in recent days and accentuated its most primal features. The peaks and crevices of the two Cuillin ranges and the Trotternish Ridge are laden with snow; the north wind bites and freezes as it swoops down from the mountains or in from the sea; mornings arrive glistening, evenings fall at a beat to a fathomless black and with cloudless skies so devoid of light pollution one is able to behold the iridescent splendour of the Milky Way.

In total, it is very often right now just as wondrous as I could ever imagine a place to be. Hunkered down in our warm little house on frigid nights, which is to say every one during this past week, the effect is like being wrapped up in a cocoon and made safe from the world outside. Often times that too applies in a more general sense to living on the island: there is here a tangible feeling of being distant and at a remove from events elsewhere. No bad thing this past fortnight at least, when in our glorious isolation even Donald Trump's election to the US Presidency has been made to seem out of reach of whatever demons might soon be summoned forth.

For us these last three months have been a steady, but continual learning process. The warmth of our welcome has been enriched by the steady diet of tips and recommendations we continue to be fed. Among the knowledge we have latterly been gifted is the location of a shop from which to buy fish straight off the boats that chug out from Portree harbour each weekday dawn; directions to a secreted path that winds up from the town, through pine forest and onto a plateau from which to view the island's three mountain ranges, and panoramas of ocean, loch and ochre-coloured moorland; and the details of doctors and dentists, and teachers at everything from acoustic guitar and yoga to karate.

From a personal perspective, I have also begun to acquire a belated education in live broadcast radio. In the first instance and just the other week, I received instruction on how to operate the 'board' from a gentleman who necessarily had the patience and forbearance of a saint. Now, I have done radio before. Indeed, for several years I presented a weekly show on Q magazine's sister radio station. This was the Q Show [and how we laboured over that title...], and through the course of it I must have racked up hundreds of hours on air.

During all that time, though, no-one was ever foolish enough to let me loose on things that required any kind of technical aptitude. Rather, I would simply roll up at our poky but well-appointed London studio each Wednesday afternoon and waffle away for a couple of hours, while a very nice man named Andy Westcott did all the hard work for me. Andy was the show's producer and he it was who operated the galaxy of knobs and buttons that make up the regulation sound board and which were as mysterious to me as the finer points of astrophysics.

The two of us hosted an assortment of guests on the show, all of whom had the dubious pleasure of being interviewed by me and also reviewing a batch of new singles' releases. It was a simple format, and a 'borrowed' one too, but I left it with a richness of memories. Among the younger, wide-eyed visitors to Andy's and my domain were Florence Welch and Mumford & Sons, just in advance of either of them becoming the strutting, planet-gobbling pop stars they are today. Of our more seasoned celebrities, Belinda Carlisle appeared to enjoy the experience as much as root canal work. Manfully as I tried to coax a smile from the one-time Go-Go's girl, she sat tight-lipped and stony-faced, regarding me as if I were something she had found on the bottom of her shoe. I couldn't think why.

I thought I had at least tempted a chortle out of the actor Rhys Ifans. He had turned up somewhat over-refreshed and apparently unable to form a coherent sentence. "That's easy for you to say," I informed him when his first utterance proved to be unintelligible gibberish. He made a sound like an engine back-firing and which I took for laughter. Until, that is, he pressed his lips to my ear and whispered very clearly, and with an overpowering stench of booze and no little menace: "You're a cheeky c**t, aren't you?" And then he kicked me hard on the shin.

Bald-bonced dance boffin Moby on the other hand greeted me as if I were an old friend, throwing his arms around me and pondering aloud when and where it was we had last met. The two of us had in fact never before been in the same room together, much less exchanged even a passing word though I didn't have the heart to tell him. Then there was erstwhile Housemartin and Beautiful South-er Paul Heaton, who really was lovely but also bonkers. At one point, I asked him if he had any hobbies. It sounded a harmless enough inquiry, but unleashed the hounds. "Oh yes," said Heaton, eyes ablaze and he began to reel off a list of all the things that he collected. Among them were football shirts, beer mats, crisp packets, road atlases, ring-pulls from cans of pop, and last but judging by Heaton's exultant expression not least, single items of litter that he retrieved from the roadside when walking his son to school each morning. I backed as far away from him as was possible in a space with the dimensions of a shoebox.

Perhaps my favourite guest of all was Tom Jones. We heard him coming long before we saw him, as his voice resounded down the corridors of our floor like rolling thunder. "Hello my lovely!" his baritone boomed on numerous occasions and as we were to learn later at every female who happened across his path. The Human Crotch subsequently swept into the studio in a dazzle of brilliant white teeth and expensive cologne, trailed by an attentive man-servant who carried with him several bottles of beer. Tom instantaneously proceeded to regale us with tales of his running around Las Vegas with Elvis and Frank Sinatra, old school charm personified. When it came time to play the first record, he reached out for a beer. "Tsk," admonished his minder, nodding at the digital clock on the wall which read 5.47pm. Tom withdrew his hand like a chastened child. Twice more this routine was repeated and then the electric-red numbers turned to 6pm. "Ah, the sun is over the yardarm," Tom delightedly informed his Jeeves, cracking open a bottle and supping from it with evident relish.

Thanks to Cuillin FM's equivalent of Yoda, I am no longer so ignorant of the nuts and bolts of the radio operation and have been enabled to fly solo. To date I have done so four times and with only the occasional mishap. Notably, once when pushing up my 'on air' microphone fader at the very same moment as I choked on a rogue sliver of Brazil Nut. Two sheep and an agoraphobic are still wondering at how Kate Bush's Cloudbusting was interrupted by the resulting violent barking noise.

Sadly, I have had no reason as yet to test out a further nugget of wisdom passed on to me by another of the station's elder statesmen and who is the live on-air commentator on local shinty matches. The other day, this gracious soul informed me that, whenever doing an outside broadcast the best method of protecting a microphone from unwanted noise pollution is to roll over it a condom. "Aye, but the only trouble is that they're delicate wee things and split," he noted sagely. "Every Friday morning now I buy five packets of condoms from the chemist's. Course, I haven't told the old girl in there yet what I'm using them for," he added, beaming, "and she looks at me like I'm superhuman. And you know, word gets around quickly in a place such as this..."

As a family, we arrived at a landmark of our own at the start of this month. It was then that final plans for our house were submitted to the Highland Council for planning permission. At a stroke, time was made to seem elastic. The 12 weeks it will take for the council to rule will doubtless seem like an age, and yet we can look over the horizon of 2016 and into next year and regard the outline of our approaching future life. That this now has tangible form and a sensation of permanence is a thrilling thing indeed and all the more reason to bunker down and shut out whatever evils lurk beyond our borders. Or at least to not be quite so slapdash when it comes to digesting nuts...

[You can hear my Friday Night Chronicles radio show from 8pm-9pm each Friday at:  www.cuillinfm.co.uk/livestream.php].  

This Week I Have Mostly Been Listening To:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGpRQyCV7Iw

Chris Stapleton - Parachute.

Stapleton's Traveller album comes on like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger chewing the fat with Kris Kristofferson. Really, what's not to like?...

Faraway, So Close!

Right now we are enjoying an unexpected but very welcome Indian Summer upon Skye. Blue skies and an amber sun have encouraged us out into the island's great wide open. And with the days seeming longer and less hurried, I have also been given the chance to pause and reflect upon the scenic road along which we have traveled to this place, the course of which has as well often appeared impossible to predict. 

One moment of reverie that happened just the other day was for me particularly resounding. At the time, I was sat on a heather-coated outcrop that afforded an aspect of the impressive span of Glen Brittle, an arrowhead of land carved out between rolling hills and the looming teeth of the Black Cuillin range. The great glen looks out towards a majestic sea loch and whilst appreciating the dulcet lapping of the waves and scanning the clear skies for eagles, it occurred to me that almost five years ago to that day I had regarded another evocative sea view. This one, though, was from many thousands of feet in the air and the vantage of a private jet ferrying the members of U2 across the Irish Sea and on to London.

Just then I was coming to the end of my ten-year tenure as Editor of the music magazine Q. Being fully appreciative of this fact, in the time that I had left at the job I had resolved to enjoy as much as possible its manifest fringe benefits. I had therefore commissioned myself to write a cover feature marking the 20th anniversary of perhaps U2's best album, Achtung Baby. This endeavor had taken me at first to the band's hometown of Dublin where I had interviewed the Edge over a pint of Guinness in the lounge bar of the city centre hotel the professorial guitarist co-owned with his shy, retiring singer, Bono. And since the band were going on the next day to an awards ceremony in London, I had hitched a ride home with them. 

So there we sat, U2 and I, in tan-coloured leather seats as deep as buckets and as comfy as a mother's embrace. Opposite me the Edge and Bono reclined, the latter with his eyes shaded by dark glasses and talking a mile-a-minute about how he had spent many a childhood day spotting planes at Dublin Airport. Across a wide, carpeted aisle, debonair bassist Adam Clayton was stretched out with the morning paper. Only drummer Larry Mullen was absent attending to a family matter, which had deprived us of the party's driest sense of humour. We proceeded in this state of gentle repose for perhaps 10, 15 minutes and until the plane suddenly dropped through the air like a stone, the murmur of its engines turning to a protesting whine. The craft then jolted and lurched to one side and the other. "Turbulence," muttered Clayton, hands tightening on the arms of his seat. 

The next several minutes passed with our plane being bucked and buffeted wildly through banks of deceptively benign looking milk-white cloud. Expressions froze on faces. Sphincters tightened. And no-one spoke, until that is Bono leaped to his feet, stood rigid to attention and announced in his loudest voice, "I'm gay!" And just like the classic scene from Almost Famous that he referenced, we also did not end up crashing to earth in a fireball, but instead landed at a well-appointed airfield on the outskirts of the city and from where we were chauffeured to our final destination aboard a fleet of sleek, black executive cars. I shared a vehicle with Bono, and on occasion even managed to get a word in edge-ways as we glided along. 

We were disembarked at a discreet side entrance to the Savoy Hotel. At Bono's bidding, I followed him inside the grand building. His was not a routine check-in procedure. Rather, we were led by a liveried gentleman past a group of staff lined up to greet their VIP guest, their uniforms crisp and freshly starched, and into a private elevator that whisked us several floors up to the Winston Churchill Suite, named after the Prime Minister who had resided there during the dark days of the Second World War. The suite was the size of a football pitch and as opulently dressed as a papal palace in dark teak and crushed velvet. 

Bono and I had tea and biscuits together. I had spent time with him previously in London and also in the South of France and Hawaii, and on each occasion he had been warm and entirely engaging. Since I very much suspected that this would be our final meeting, I savored the last fleeting details. How tiny and vulnerable a bone-china cup looked in his meaty hand. How the late-afternoon light cast him in the glow of a sepia-tinted photograph. How much I desperately needed the toilet. Before I left, he took me out onto the balcony to better appreciate our elevated location. As we gazed down at the Thames, shimmering in the gloaming, Bono threw an arm around my shoulder and said with a smile: "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."

Over and again during the past two months I have thought similar, albeit that the circumstances and context have been so different. For example, I would once not have imagined that I might undertake a five-hour round trip by car just for the purpose of viewing a fitted kitchen. But as Denise and I now have to make decisions on the fixtures for our future home, the venture of driving 90-plus miles coast-to-coast to Inverness to acquaint ourselves with an example of precisely what can be achieved within our budget seemed not only entirely worthwhile, but rich with tantalizing possibilities. Likewise, and upon hearing from a neighbour of an unfortunate incident involving a gale and a blow-away trampoline, I spent an afternoon pottering about our temporary garden in quiet contemplation of what could and should be tethered down in the event of the inevitable winter storms. Bikes, bins and even the shed fell under my steely gaze, though given as I am in such matters to eternal prevarication, all remain at risk of being swept away.

It was on another potter, and to familiarize myself with the immediate area, that I happened upon Cuillin FM. The island's local radio station is sited across an undulating cow field and uphill from us in a small wood cabin and from where one can look out over a sleepy collection of homes and beyond to the hills and sea. In many respects Cuillin FM is wonderful. For instance, thanks to its Catholic approach to programming it is entirely possible to hear a Scottish jig, a Broadway show tune and Judas Priest all within a couple of hours of each other. And so closely is the station linked to the people of the island, that no-one listening would have been surprised that a morning news bulletin led off with a story about a Dunvegan lady who had woken to find her garden gate had vanished and was appealing for information on its whereabouts, as was indeed the case just the other day.

Cuillin FM is also island life in microcosm. It is populated by a motley collection of folk, all of whom band together to bring it to life and keep it running and in their various and different ways. The station MD, for instance, doubles up as on-air commentator on the island's shinty matches and also as Skye's resident grief counselor. It is also ever likely to throw open its arms to interlopers offering assistance, which is how it is that I have come to be presenting a weekly Friday night show between the hours of 8pm and 9pm. As much was arrived at via an introductory email and an afternoon coffee, and in my case most certainly on account of my willing and enthusiasm rather than any particular talent. This seems to me - if not whatever audience I happen to be broadcasting to - a very good and healthy way to progress through life. 

Doubtless I shall ponder as much and more when I sit in the darkened radio studio next Friday night and the one after, and am otherwise just about as content as I believe its possible to be. Such will be the case for the next 12 weeks at least and by when I expect to have reveled in yet more interior design porn and for our path to have undergone a few more twists and turns.

[Hear the Friday Night Chronicles 8pm-9pm each Friday at: www.cuillinfm.co.uk/livestream.php].  

This Week I Have Mostly Been Listening To:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gPQLB3AQcQ

Bon Iver- 00000 Million.

The new Bon Iver album is, I think, one of three bold, beautiful and often extraordinary records to have come out in recent weeks. Another is Nick Cave's. That the third so happens to be by Marillion I'll just leave dangling here...

Who'll Stop the Rain

Whenever during the past couple of years that my wife Denise or I told someone, indeed anyone resident on Skye of our intention to move up to the island, we were met with the same response. That being a knowing, even pitying look and a single inquiry: 'Ah, but have you done a winter yet?' 

Now that we are actually here full-time, the subject of our impending first full winter on Skye remains the staple of the majority of our interactions. Why just this week I found it cropping up in a conversation I was having with someone of an otherwise entirely positive and well-meaning bent. Apropos of nothing we had been talking about to that point, I was informed that my inaugural Season of Doom [or at least words to that effect] had in fact already begun. 'And we'll no be out the other side till next April,' was the conclusion to this forebode-some statement, 'and that's if we're lucky.'

We are, of course, right now still in the midst of September. And at the precise time that this exchange took place, most of the rest of the country was basking in and/or enduring some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Britain. But then, on Skye that very morning dark, ominous clouds had settled low over the island and an ill wind soon blew in - these were 'blowy' conditions in local parlance; or 'Hurricane Rob Roy' to a lily-liver-ed Englishman such as me. And then the rain came. The mere word rain, in fact, does not in any way accurately convey the deluge that assailed us for the next couple of hours.Suffice to say, it was of the same awesome nature and elemental force as the one that had Noah reaching for his hammer and nails.

It was then that I grasped a single, salient point which is this: winter does not mess around on Skye. Or indeed hang about. Quite simply, for us this year there will be no gentle transition through the russet colouring of autumn. But rather an abrupt, 'move directly to Go' race towards frigid bleakness and a wild unpredictability that will make the act of opening the curtains each morning a nerve-jangling experience and one pregnant with possibilities. 

As recently as last November, Storm Abigail tore into Skye from the Atlantic and for several consecutive days blew out pretty much all of the island's electricity supply. Schools were closed, local businesses rendered impotent and people from the more remote areas, which is most everywhere, had to be bused into the capital Portree for hot meals and a shower.

Upon hearing of this last act, I felt the comfort of a warm inner glow. It is wondrous to me that an entire community should rally around in such a way in the face of adversity. And then again, and from a perspective shaped exclusively by naked self-interest, I found it utterly re-assuring. For should the same fate or one similar befall these parts any time soon, then my wife, children and I will still be able to depend upon certain creature comforts without the expectation - and it would be a forlorn one indeed - of me 'going Grylls'.

In these initial weeks I have as well acquired other welcome snippets of information and learning. For instance, and thanks to our young son Tom's twice-weekly lessons at school, I now know that 'Am faod mi a dhol dhan ttaigh-bheag?' is the Gaelic for: 'Can I go to the toilet?' Potentially life-saving knowledge in a future tempest, no. But a blinder to be able to pull out of one's back pocket during a keenly contested game of Trivial Pursuit: Hebridean Edition. 

Speaking of all things Hebridean, may I also draw your attention to the unfettered delights to be had from a daily study of the sightings board to be found here: http://www.whaledolphintrust.co.uk

Right now, I cannot think of too many things that are more pleasurable, or thrilling than being able to follow the progress of an Orca, Minke Whale or 'Unidentified Baleen Species' north from Bara to Uist and on to Lewis, giddy all the time with the anticipation of one or other then tracking west towards Skye and uninterrupted passage through the Sound of Rasaay. The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust is obviously the preserve of very good souls.

I have now also come to appreciate the spectacle of Shinty. A sport unique to the Scottish Highlands, there appears to be a Shinty pitch in every town, village and settlement in the region, no matter how small or forbidding the terrain. Our youngest Charlie has just started to play Shinty at school and has been in raptures about it. This is not wholly surprising since in total Shinty seems to this uninformed observer to be a combination of the best bits of hockey, football, British Bulldog and the sort of school playground set-to around which kids traditionally gather and shout, 'Fight! Fight!' 

To further Charlie's appreciation of his new pastime, and since one of his school pal's dad's was turning out, the other weekend we trooped off to see Skye's second XI take on Fort William. Shinty is played at a ferocious pace, the ball sped from one end of the pitch to the other with great skill. Often, players clout it overhead and with the narrow ends of their sticks. Doing so in such a maelstrom I can only approximate to having to thread the eye of a needle whilst being repeatedly punched in the face. 

We enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Charlie's wee friend's dad less so, since his Skye team were vanquished 3-2 in a white/bare-knuckle contest. Furthermore, he was unable to play much part in the unfolding drama. Ten minutes into the first half and in a typically juddering clash with his direct opponent, he had his collar bone snapped and had to be rushed off to hospital. Fearing the sight of this might have upset Charlie, I turned to put a comforting fatherly arm around his shoulder only to find that he was already re-enacting the offending tackle with near-psychotic glee. Clearly, the Shinty force is strong in this one.

For me, though, the most pleasing development of late has been the extent to which the words of my good friend Neil are being daily borne out. As at the very last minute I vacillated over the wisdom of our imminent move north, Neil it was who gave me counsel. Sagely, he pointed out that it was entirely natural to be struck by a form of terror when one arrived at the metaphorical edge of a cliff, but that my fears would subside no sooner had I steeled myself and jumped. It is Neil's words that I have come back to on the many good days that we have been blessed with so far.

And a good day here can be founded on the turn of a corner that then allows the aspect of an expanse of deep blue ocean. Or, as was the case two evenings ago, a brace of Sea Eagles soaring like aerial barn doors between the twin peaks that flank the entrance to Portree's natural harbour. At such times, it is all but impossible not to slip into a state of grace and feel fully at one with the world around and about. Or, put another way, to start spouting hippy-dippy-sounding babble.

I went into just such a reverie on another afternoon last week and when Denise and I were visiting an existing house similar in siting, scale and make-up to the one that we are due to have built. There we were, wrapped within the womb of a single-storey, Larch-clad home perched upon a hill that loms over the picturesque town of Staffin on the island's east coast. Two floor-to-ceiling windows running the length of the building allowed us to drink in the view; rugged green, yellow and brown-hued moorland dotted with snug white dwellings; a cobalt Atlantic ebbing to all points of the horizon. The sun even peeked out from behind porridge-grey clouds and the overall effect was glorious, spell-binding, like a first kiss.

Afterwards, we drove back down the hill and to here:http://skyepiecafe.co.uk/ - one of the many treasures that we have already discovered. The good news is that the Pie Cafe is open till November at least. And as I sat there, tucking into a curried lentil creation so divine I could have bathed in it, my abiding thought was this: come on then winter, do your worst...

This Week I Have Mostly Been Listening To:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi36v7XHPro

The Peatbog Faeries - Tom in the Front. And for more on Skye's finest go to: www.peatbogfaeries.com/

Landing on Water

The site pictured here, or at least the idea of it, has occupied an enormous chunk of my conscious thoughts for 742 days and counting now. It was taken from the heart of a 0.65 acre plot sited in an elevated position overlooking the junction of two sea lochs, Loch Bracadale and Loch Harport, and at the midpoint of a single-track road that winds like a carelessly discarded ribbon through the township of Fiskavaig on the north-west fringe of the Isle of Skye. And by next summer, all things being good and equal, it will be on this very spot that our new house will stand and we will be living as a family.

It took two years almost to the day for my wife Denise and I to accomplish the following: 1/ Determine that, yes, we rather fancied the idea of relocating lock, stock and barrel to this island idyll; 2/ Identify the area of Skye we wanted to live in, find a plot there that we could build upon and then persuade the owner to sell it to us; 3/ Seek out a local firm of architects who could design and manage the construction of said house and within our modest means; 4/ Sell our existing home in England; 5/ Remain upon speaking terms with each other and our two young sons, Tom and Charlie, and also keep sane. In truth, the jury is out on whether or not this very last goal has been attained.

Eleven days is the amount of time that has now elapsed since the four of us arrived on Skye not as holidaymakers, as we had done for each of the preceding six summers, but as residents. In reality, our initial landing was not quite the magical experience I had so keenly anticipated. The house we are renting in the island capital of Portree, population 2000-and-something, is neat and modern, but looks out not onto sweeping ocean vistas and soaring peaks but towards uniform rows of other neat and modern dwellings to the front and an electrical substation to the rear. A Co-Op superstore is just a short hop down the hill. Since all of our possessions were still four days distant from us and the house came unfurnished, we occupied it to begin with like a ragged band of squatters, sleeping in sleeping bags on hard-wood floors and eating meals from off of our laps. 

In the first stages of our becoming domiciled, the more discomfiting facts of island life, ignored or else unimportant whilst we merely visiting, have struck us in rapid-fire succession like volleys from a machine-gun. 

To whit: the waiting list to be registered with Skye's only dental surgery currently runs to 500, which effectively means that if I'm lucky I will get my next polish or filling in 2039; the misfortune of having something go wrong with the household electrics or plumbing is multiplied tenfold by there being no-one to call about it, or at least no-one who is going to rush to your aid any time soon; and if you are anywhere out and about during the hours of daylight and the wind should drop, you are guaranteed to be eaten alive by the psychotically voracious swarms of midges that occupy most of the available air space at this time of year. It is on account of multiple bites from these, the evilest of life forms that Denise's face has swelled to the size of a party balloon and I have routinely gone about in public like some kind of demented wind-up toy, hands flapping madly but hopelessly about my face and other extremities.

And yet... There are moments, frequent and indelible, when Skye itself seems so epic and plain otherworldly that it truly takes the breath away. Driving young Charlie to school each morning, for instance, we travel along a road that bisects two of the island's three great mountain ranges, the Red and Black Cuillins. To one side the horizon is filled with the Red's vast, Martian-esque domes; to the other lie the Black's jagged peaks as ominous as shark's teeth. Just last weekend, we rested on a perch of rock 2,000 feet up and among the boggling geological features of the third range, the Trotternish Ridge, the mid-afternoon sun casting dappled cloud shadows onto the moorland below, while off to the west the Atlantic lay deep and blue and momentarily calmed.

The day before we had sat in the reassuringly well-appointed offices of our island architects making final adjustments to the blueprint plans for our house. Fiddling with the dimensions of the doors and cupboards and recesses, and determining the precise expanse of glass required to fully drink in the view above. It seemed right there and then like the beginning of a great adventure.

Stick around here and you will be more than welcome to follow it through with us. After all, what could possibly go wrong?...

This Week I Have Mostly Been Listening To:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpWoTO-lLbE