A new film celebrating the 700^th anniversary of Scotland’s most important historic document, goes online at 9am on Saturday 4^th April via this link 

https://vimeo.com/401599947

2020 marks the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, widely regarded as Scotland’s most iconic document; probably the first declaration in medieval Europe to promote the idea that people are above Kings, that a nation is its people and that any nation has the right to self determination.

Written in 1320, its evocative sentiments about freedom and independence have given it special distinction, not just in Scotland, but around the world.

But the coronavirus has effectively cancelled all live celebrations of the event in Arbroath and across Scotland, and sadly no UK broadcasters have scheduled any significant TV coverage, though Billy Kay has produced a three-part series for Radio Scotland.

At the last minute,  filmmaker Charlie Stuart and myself decided to make a 30-minute video for web release, so the anniversary does not go completely unmarked.

DECLARATION, the letter of liberty includes interviews with historians Fiona Watson, Tom Turpie and Billy Kay who discuss the significance of the document and the meaning of the text. There's atmospheric filming around Arbroath, in Edinburgh and in Bannockburn House with glimpses of the surviving medieval document in the National Library and a convincing replica, produced at speed, for this film. 

The public contributed lines from the Declaration recorded on phones and sent to a Facebook page - the most famous contributor is award-winning actor Brian Cox, whose lines and sent from his phone in deepest New York State.

The project was made possible by funding from lottery millionaire, Chris Weir. Scots-born, Oscar nominated film composer Patrick Doyle (below) has produced a fabulous original score, after hearing about the film just last week in the Lesley Riddoch podcast. 

The film is not associated or endorsed by any political party. According to Charlie Stuart, "We’re making this as Scots who treasure our heritage, history and character and will not let this important moment go unrecognised."

Lesley Riddoch said; " We've had the most extraordinary luck with historians and authors who dropped everything two weeks ago to get filming finished before the coronavirus lockdown. We’re also grateful to Historic Environment Scotland and staff at Arboath Abbey itself for access as they were closing the venue. Since then Charlie and I have worked together remotely, along with composer Patrick Doyle. We were absolutely astonished and so grateful for his unexpected offer to produce an original score for the film. Now we need everyone's help to distribute Declaration, when it's launched on Saturday morning - the day that should have been marked by an official parade and march through Arbroath. We have no broadcaster behind us, so we urge Scots to share widely and make sure the Declaration has a virtual 700th anniversary to remember." 

Is the Highland economy healthy?

Judging from tourist traffic, yes, it is. Passing Glenfinnan last week at 10.30 in the morning, all three official car parks were full. Likewise, hotel and café car parks a mile away, plus lay-bys and tracks to nearby homes and fields. A perfect tourist storm was about to occur when the West coast steam train crossed the viaduct made famous by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express triggering the creation of a thousand smartphone pictures amongst the waiting crowd. Combined with the renewed fascination for all things Jacobite in the wake of Outlander, moments like these are now so regular that online sites advise Glenfinnan visitors on “secret” parking opportunities.

It’s the same story on Skye where plans for toilets at the Fairy Pools car park in Glen Brittle have been redesigned following an "extraordinary increase in visitor numbers." The toilet block was planned to cater for around 100,000 people in 2015 but the site dealt with 190,000 in 2018. Queues, demand, visitors hungry for Highland experience but facilities lagging behind. It’s a familiar story – agreed. But it masks a much more serious mismatch of resources facing young local people.

On Skye, I met three Highland friends all living together in someone else’s second home. All three have jobs, but nowhere to go when the owner needs her house back. One 20-something lass makes a round trip of 2 hours a day to reach her job in Portree, and considers herself lucky. Her young colleagues must travel daily from temporary housing on the mainland. 

One problem is the conversion of long-term leases into short term lets for the holiday market. Astonishingly there are 300 properties on Air B n B on Skye alone. That’s contributed to a situation where NHS and teaching jobs can’t be filled, and beds for staff in cafes and hotels can’t be found – even in spare rooms. As a result, some restaurants are now self-service, some closed during a busy winter season and some are quietly for sale, also affected by the tin lid of Brexit, removing the supply of new hotel staff. Meanwhile two temporary council housing blocks in Portree are set to be demolished. They’re inhabited mostly by young folk working long-hours in catering jobs who don't know if they'll be rehoused in Portree, or in emergency housing on the distant mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh.

This hidden rural housing crisis was explored at the Community Land Scotland conference at Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye this weekend. It seems pots of money for affordable housing have been given to councils by the Scottish Government over recent years. But there’s a stipulation the cash can only be drawn down by RSL’s or Registered Social Landlords. Only a couple operate in the Highlands and Islands and must establish is there’s a real housing need before deciding to build. But folk in sparsely populated rural areas often don’t join the single “pan-Highland” waiting list. They don’t want to be assigned a house hundreds of miles away, and since they know no local homes are available there seems no point. The result is that when housing cash is finally available, it doesn’t go to areas where no-one’s on the waiting list.

Thus, the crisis of rural homelessness continues, housing cash remains unspent and the myth that young folk don’t want to live beyond the “bright lights” continues.  So too the myth that 20-somethings don’t want to live on the land and that local kids only want to leave. Of course, some do.

But many more enterprising young Highlanders want to set up tourism, leisure and outdoor businesses, capitalising on the new Highland visitor surge. Others see the possibility of getting reasonably secure jobs in construction or public sector service provision as the population slowly expands.

But ironically, at this moment of economic opportunity, there is growing depopulation – the result of a chronic market failure in the supply of housing, land and genuinely local control over development plans. It could be different.

In most of Europe far more housing is self-built – that doesn’t mean folk physically humping beams, bricks and mortar (though that is pretty common on Eigg). It does mean small groups commissioning and controlling the construction of their own homes. Last weekend an audience of activists and housing professionals at an Archifringe event in Edinburgh heard how ten women in their 50’s jointly purchased a plot of land in central Berlin & built a tenement fitting their own housing needs. In Norway, Germany and most European countries this is how 60 per cent of homes are built - in Australia it’s 80 per cent. In the UK only 12 per cent of homes are self-built (probably less in Scotland.) So, there could be a massive expansion of self-procurement. Instead Scotland continues our decades-long surrender to speculative volume house builders and over-stretched, slow-acting social housing agencies. It’s crazy. Self-procurement was almost designed for young folk living in rural areas like Skye. But the first insurmountable obstacle is lack of access to affordable land. The second is the vast uplift in land prices that accompanies the award of planning permission – something the Scottish Green Party’s Land Value Capture proposal would have redressed if the SNP and Tories hadn’t combined last week to vote it down. They also defeated an amendment to the Planning Bill which would’ve required planning permission for a change of use into short term lets. The Scottish Government’s explanation for blocking these practical measures was frankly feeble. They say the council tax replacement might include a form of land tax and more limited restrictions on Air BnB were approved– proposed by a Tory MSP, revealed to have had nine meetings with short term letting companies despite originally denying any contact.

This isn’t good enough.

There appears to be no sense of urgency amongst quangos, councils and above all amongst SNP politicians about the near collapse in key structures of rural life, and the near total absence of genuinely affordable, secure housing in the remote areas where jobs exist and people want to live - not just towns. Pre-constructed, portable modular housing commissioned by community groups not just RSLs might be a short-term solution.

Does the Scottish Government have a better one, or indeed any strategy before parts of remote Scotland collapse ?

Norway Jan 19^th 7.30pm Mitchell Theatre

Scots fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers is based in Norway, and is reprising Owerset, her New Voices commission that’s themed around Scots and Gaelic words originating in Old Norse. It features a six-piece ensemble on fiddles, trumpet, accordion, guitars and double bass. Sarah-Jane is playing with the fabulous Scots pianist, flautist and composer Hamish Napier. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/hamish-napier-the-woods-with-sarah-jane-summers-owerset

Denmark Jan 23^rd City Halls 8pm

Danish duo Elmøe & Hoffmann, inspired by traditional dance tunes, classical chamber music and cinematic compositions are supporting the brilliant Lau, here returning to their folk roots with an all-acoustic set for the first time in a decade. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/lau-and-elme-hoffmann 

Sweden 24^th Jan 8pm The Tron

Swedish musical polymath Gustaf Ljunggren, on Dulcitone, Indian harmonium, Mellotron and langspil (a traditional Icelandic zither) responds to Boo Hewerdine’s latest album  https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/boo-hewerdine-gustaf-ljunggren-before-and-katherine-priddy

Norway 24^th Jan 7.30pm The Platform

Scottish indie/folk musician Alasdair Roberts joins with a band of like-minded multi-instrumental spirits Völvur from Norway for a concert of his songs. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/alasdair-roberts-og-vlvur-and-support

Norway 24^th Jan 7.30pm The Mackintosh Church

Norway’s Susanna Wallumrød reprises her 2018 album Go Dig My Grave, with haunting original songs & transformative cover versions featuring material by Lou Reed, Joy Division, Baudelaire, Purcell, Elizabeth Cotton and traditional folk ballads. “Limpid-voiced, open-hearted, musically idiosyncratic and touched with mystery.” (New York Times). Susanna shares the bill with award-winning Scottish singer Hannah Rarity https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/susanna-go-dig-my-grave-with-hannah-rarity 

Estonia 24^th Jan 7.30pm Concert Hall

Estonia’s enthralling Duo Ruut play together on a single kannel zither, accompanying re-imagined traditional songs and their own original compositions. Here's a video of the two lasses proving their Nordic credentials by playing on a snowy clifftop in light rain!

They share the bill with Shetland fiddler Ross Couper and flautist/guitarist Tom Oakes; and Luke Daniels with pioneering Syrian oud player Rihab Azar, intermingling Middle Eastern & Celtic sounds. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/ross-couper-tom-oakes-with-duo-ruut-and-luke-daniels-rihab-azar

Finland Jan 29^th 7.30pm Mitchell Theatre

Finnish duo Juuri & Juuri (Emilia Lajunen and Eero Grunstrom) are playing with Edinburgh band Dallahan https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/dallahan-and-juuri-juuri

Finland Jan 30^th 7.30pm Concert Hall

Esteemed by her peers as a genre-transcending visionary, Finnish accordionist/composer Johanna Juhola is a prolific collaborator. Her own free-spirited exploration of Finland’s’s folk and tango traditions features guitarist Roope Aarnio and sound designer Teemu Korpipää. Johanna is supporting Scottish fiddle supergroup Session A9. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/session-a9-and-johanna-juhola-trio

Finland Jan 31^st 7.30pm St Luke’s

Finnish electro-folk sextet Okra Playground (for whom ‘okra’ is an earthy pigment, not the tropical vegetable), combine three-part vocals with plucked zither and bowed lyre, synth and electric bass. They share the bill with Ross Ainslie, whose acclaimed third album Sanctuary, channels influences from the Treacherous Orchestra, India Alba and Jarlath Henderson. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/ross-ainslie-the-sanctuary-band-and-okra-playground

Finland Jan 31^st 7.30pm Tramway

Nordic duo VILDÁ evoke their wild native landscapes in a unique fusion of Sámi joiks and Finnish accordion tradition, allied with shamanic grooves, beatboxing, throat-singing and electronica. They’re supporting Fatoumata Diawara, whose 2011 debut album saw her hailed as a tnew standard-bearer of Mali’s musical traditions. Since then, she’s featured in collaborations with Bobby Womack, Herbie Hancock, Roberto Fonseca and Damon Albarn. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/fatoumata-diawara-and-vild

Finland Feb 1 7.30pm City Halls

Frigg are the leading group on the Nordic fiddle scene, specialising in Nordgrass (Nordic sounds fused with bluegrass). They’re playing with BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winners in 2018, the Irish/Manx quintet Ímar. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/frigg-with-mar

Finland Feb 1 7.30pm Mackintosh Church

Sväng’s line-up features chromatic, diatonic and bass harmonicas plus the rare vintage Harmonetta, playing everything from Sibelius and Chopin to tango, blues and Balkan sounds, abetted by brilliant showmanship. “The harmonica equivalent of the Kronos Quartet” (Songlines). They share the stage with sublime Scottish fiddle foursome RANT. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/rant-with-svng   

Norway/Sweden 2^nd Feb Concert Hall 1pm

Marit Falt, born in Sweden, raised in Norway and based in Scotland.” Best known through her award-winning duo with Gaelic fiddler Rona Wilkie – recent co-composers of a fabulous new live score for the Norwegian silent movie Laila - she’s playing here mainly on mandola, leading an eight-piece ensemble of strings, accordion and clarinet. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/new-voices-marit-flt  

And at 8pm Marit plays in Bogha-frois – Gaelic for rainbow – new music and new voices from LGBT+ folk performers. https://www.celticconnections.com/event/2/bogha-frois-lgbt-voices-in-folk

By late November, we could be in the midst of a general election, recovering from a snap election or even (please the gods) at the start of a second indyref. So, it's crazy to plan ahead - right? But between Nov 29-Dec 1 I'll be at the Festival of Sibelius performed by the fabulous Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (pic left © Guido Pijper) - come what may. I'm no classical music expert, but from the first time I heard Finlandia by Jean Sibelius I was completely hooked, soothed, reassured and stirred all at once and felt I somehow understood the musical sentiments of a man from another northern country. A cycling trip round the Aland Islands - owned by Finland but actually closer to Sweden - made me appreciate the massive differences between flat, mostly land-locked, semi-Arctic, forest-covered Finland and mountainous, sea-fringed, moor-covered Scotland. The emotional value attached to land also seems greater in Finland than quasi-feudal Scotland. The Finns doggedly fought two wars against WW2 Russian land grabs and the relatively equal nature of land ownership in Finland meant that all incomes rose after independence, (not just the bank balances of a few Dukes) when the wood-pulp industry took off, and Finnish cooperatives started supplying the raw material to almost every newspaper in Europe.

Can you hear any of that in Sibelius epic, stirring, elemental music? Probably not. But I hear an easy familiarity with the rhythms of nature - the awesome force of wind, ice and snow as well as the private, little idiosyncratic sounds of the forest. It's as if nature has come alive and the composer is simply recording it. That intimate proximity is still something that eludes most urban Scots, methinks. Reading a bit about Sami and Finnish beliefs and the reverence they accord trees, Sibelius' music also seems to narrate and embody the powerful folk myths of his people.

The back-story to Finlandia is fascinating. The following comes from an excellent article by Danny Riley at the Bachtrack website. In 1899, while Finland was occupied by Russia, Sibelius was asked to compose some music for (officially) a fundraiser for newspaper workers' pensions, but its real purpose was to help finance a Finnish free press. Sibelius created a set of seven musical tableaux depicting momentous occasions in his country’s history. Starting in the mists of Finnish legend with the Kalevala-inspired “Song of Väinämöinen”, the piece moved through musical depictions of events such as the introduction of Christianity to Finland, the Thirty Years’ War and a Russian invasion of 1714. The work ended with the rousing “Finland Awakes” – an optimistic look towards the country’s future. This finale was so well-received that Sibelius revised it as a standalone piece the following year with the title Finlandia. The piece had to be performed under politically inoffensive pseudonyms to avoid Russian censorship including “Happy feelings at the awakening of Finnish Spring”, “A Scandinavian Choral March” and even “Impromptu”.

Years later, when the Finnish parliament declared independence from Russia in December 1917, Sibelius said; “We fought 600 years for our freedom and I am part of the generation which achieved it. Freedom! My Finlandia is the story of this fight. It is the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.”  

Whatever your politics, there's nothing more comforting in the darkness of winter, than the rich sounds of Sibelius - and no other place in Europe to hear nine fabulous works by Sibelius in one weekend. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra held the first part of its Festival in May - these November/December dates constitute the second half. Here's a wee sample of what's to come with more info and how to book tickets here. If you've never been to Rotterdam, it's a great, breezy contrast to Amsterdam - new and old architecture, industrial and stunning civic buildings plus canals and Europe's biggest port all co-existing happily. I made a wee podcast about the city with Chris Smith (complete with images) back in 2011.

Emigration, slavery, prostitution, grinding poverty, hypocrisy and the constant threat of life on the streets - Dundee Rep's production of Tay Bridge tackles weighty issues with humour, vibrant Scots, cabaret-style musical interludes and a series of cameos based on the life stories of those who died in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1878. It's a characteristically powerful way to celebrate 80 years of performance in Dundee and showcases the skills of actors in Scotland's only professional, permanent ensemble, the versatility of the stage and the massive talent of the backstage team. I can't remember seeing more dramatic staging - congratulations to Lighting Designer Simon Wilkinson, Designer Emily James and the rest of the technical team. Peter Arnott tells the story of the infamous bridge disaster through six compelling, authentic and distinctive stories, delivered with humour and sometimes heart-breaking intensity - Irene MacDougall is mesmerising in all her roles, Emily Winter perfectly captures the brittle bravery of a runaway mill-girl, Anne Kidd's, big-hearted, Scots-speaking maid almost steals the show, and "youngster" Leah Byrne radiates the hopeful energy of a young working class woman determined to find a better life elsewhere. Perhaps in an unwitting tribute to Dundee's history as "women's toon," the gals get the most compelling stories and sympathetic characters. But Ewan Donald, Barrie Hunter and Bailey Newsome are all excellent as the three male passengers in an eerie railway carriage that never reaches its destination.  The final scenes are shocking and evocative - that's quite an achievement since the  audience are well-acquainted with the tragedy and know exactly how it ends. But Tay Bridge is a play for our times, a tribute to the hopefulness of generations past and an eloquent reminder of the dignity-crushing poverty that still blights lives in Dundee. Five stars — go see it. 

I'm pretty sure the 5kms stretch mentioned is not the bit where I saw cyclists on the road. But I've never cycled the route  - so what do regular cyclists think of this "solution"?

Download LR on John Beattie 6-5-19 (Made by Headliner)

I used this Spanish company cos it seems better to keep money in the country using local firms when travelling abroad. But I'll never use OK Car Rental again and have really learned my lesson — check out the public transport options first. 

I've asked OK Cars for the surcharged excess of 25.50 to be refunded back onto my card. Though after all of this I'd appreciate a refund of the full amount. No reply yet, but to be fair, it's Easter weekend. If I haven't had a refund and an apology by email by time I get home on Thursday night, I'll report them to relevant Catalan authorities and post this on Trip Advisor. Folks, you have been warned. Avoid.