Dun Eidyn Digital Design. Web Design. Edinburgh, Scotland

Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:01:38 +0000

This was my first adventure out on the hills since the hair-raising trip to An Teallach in April last year. The long delay has not been through fear however. Circumstances have just conspired against me with the weather thwarting me several times and family responsibilities playing their own familiar role. It's taken me a little while to get around to posting anything about this trip, which actually took place on the 12th and 13th of September.

I had originally intended spending the night in the back of our trusty Volvo estate, parked up in the lovely lochside car park on the east bank of Loch Lubnaig. However, on arrival at nightfall, I found 3 or 4 boozy bonfires in full swing and any thoughts of a quiet contemplative hour with a lager and the moonlit loch quickly disappeared. I continued north on the A84 to Strathyre and found refuge in the large (and empty) car park there. I marvelled, as I always do when outside the city, at the vast number of stars on show and the easily discernible Milky Way.

I was awake, fed and dressed by 7am, dropped the car at the side of the road at Ardchullarie More and set off on foot through the trees towards the path north through Glen Ample. The walk is initially very picturesque, tree-covered and very steep until breaking out into Glen Ample proper. After around 7.5k of fairly easy walking you reach the farm called Glenample and turning right immediately start ascending steeply through the trees towards Ben Vorlich. The path appears and disappears seemingly at random but in general skirts a hundred metres or so to the north of Allt a' Choire Fhuadaraich, ascending relentlessly and quickly revealing good views of the surrounding area. On reaching the summit of Ben Vorlich I was a little disappointed as the cloud base was covering the top 50 or 100 metres and obscuring what would otherwise have been a wonderful view all the way back across Stirlingshire towards Edinburgh.

While devouring a scotch egg and some chocolate I gazed across at the possible routes up neighbouring Stuc a' Chroin. From this viewpoint it was apparent that there are at least two routes. There is the easy, if steep, pull up the corrie wall lying to the north of the summit and a harder and steeper climb up a chimney lying just to the left of the bealach ridge between Ben Vorlich and its neighbour. I made for the chimney but backed off after some indecision. Perhaps if I had been with another climber I would have chanced it but on this solo trip I settled on the safer option.

The clouds lifted a bit while making for the summit of Stuc a' Chroin and revealed some better views out to the north. It had been my intention to make for the corbett of Ben Each on the way back towards Ardchullarie More but upon reaching the flatter ground between there and the previous munro I began to feel fairly washed out. I'd brought too little in the way of food for such a lengthy walk and I began to feel what road cyclists and marathon runners refer to as a "bonk" coming on. I made for the path through Glen Ample some 350 or 400 metres below.

The walk back through the Glen was not nearly as pleasant as that of the morning due to fatigue really settling in but upon reaching the car I could reflect on a good day out on the hills. Supplies of food and drinks were fallen upon and inhaled and I'd happily made it back in time to listen to the second half of the football on Radio Scotland. Hibs failing to produce anything resembling a decent display, going down 2-0 to Hamilton.

Malcolm Middleton, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh (27th Aug 2009)

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:25:30 +0000

It has actually been a fairly good year for gigs in Edinburgh so far. Scotland's capital city has long been living in the shadow of Glasgow when it comes to live music, both in terms of the venues available and the calibre of artists those venues tend to attract. This year I've seen superb Edinburgh shows by Antony and the Johnsons, PJ Harvey and John Parish, Elbow, Nick Harper, Kristin Hersh and also, last Thursday evening (27th Aug) Malcolm Middleton.

First attracting public notice as the guitarist from the now disbanded Arab Strap, Malcolm has forged a pretty successful solo career and has released five albums of material under his own name in the last 7 years. Self-deprecating, darkly humorous and laced with ironic jibes at modern "cultural" life, his music is nowhere near as miserablist in timbre as his public reputation would have you believe. It is this reputation that has prompted him to state that this will be his last album release of this kind. He feels "pigeon-holed" and wants to experiment with new musical directions. Having heard him play a couple of instrumental solo acoustic pieces, including the wonderful Returning, I'm looking forward to hearing what he comes up with.

Cabaret Voltaire's not a great venue if you are merely of average height and want to actually see the stage while the gig is in progress. I often resort to standing on the steps leading down from the bar. You get the best view but have to put up with folk coming and going past you all the way through the gig. The music from Malcolm and his band is great and infects the crowd with a jokey bonhomie. Lots of songs from the new(ish) album Waxing Gibbous, with a few older numbers thrown in for good measure. There's even a tongue-in-cheek rendition of Brian Adams' Run To You as a closer. The album itself now ranks as my favourite of Malcolm's so far, overtaking 2005's Into The Woods. You can get Malcolm's album for a bargain £8 from Full Time Hobby records.

After the gig we repair to the Jinglin Geordie pub on Fleshmarket Close. Nicely tucked away from the braying festival hordes lining the Royal Mile. A nice wee pub for the discerning Edinburgh tippler.

I didn't keep a note of the set list on the night but, from memory, it was something like this:

Red Travellin' Socks
Subset Of The World
Box & Knife
Loneliness Shines
Kiss At The Station
Shadows
Zero
Choir
Speed On The M9
A Brighter Beat
We're All Going To Die
Blue Plastic Bags
Ballad Of Fuck All
Don't Want To Sleep Tonight
Run To You

Email me if the list is wrong and I'll rectify.

photo of Malcolm at the Cabaret Voltaire by Martin Senyszak

If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:10:21 +0000

Stewart Lee - The Stand, Edinburgh (13-08-2009)

Stand-up "veteran" Stewart Lee has been doing comedy for over 20 years and during that time has found both general popularity, as one half of the Lee/Herring duo who fronted Fist of Fun on Radio and TV in the early 1990s, and more specialised rejection after the broadcast of the Jerry Springer - The Opera stage show he co-produced with Richard Thomas on national television in 2005. The rejection came, almost exclusively, from religious protest groups lead by Christian Voice UK. I think Jerry Springer - The Opera is about the only thing Stewart has been involved in making that I haven't seen. This is not because of any deeply held religious beliefs I might hold and, after the heated "discussions" that resulted from enquiring into the subject of seemingly (to me anyway) unreasoned and yet unyielding belief with people I know and like, I'm not going to be commenting any further on the subject here in a public space.

A group of ten of us, all locals, descended on The Stand in Edinburgh as part of an evening of Festival cheer. I had never seen Stewart perform live before, outside of television or DVD, and I felt my high expectations for the hour long set could not possibly be met. This set starts without making any reference to a distressing world event in an unfamiliar and confrontational manner in the way some of his earlier shows have done. Never more hilariously than at the very start of 2004s Stand Up Comedian where Lee opened with his take on American "over-reaction" to the events of 9-11 (the 9th of November). This evening's opening material centres instead on an incident which happened to Stewart in a London branch of Café Nero with his young son.

One of the great things about Stewart Lee's stand-up is that you just don't know how serious (or not) he is about some of his pronouncements. Does he really wish full blindness upon Jeremey Clarkson's three children? Does he wish equally, that Richard Hammond had been decapitated during the dragster crash he had in 2006, his still sentient head bouncing across the tarmac into a pool of urine? These are just "jokes" he says. In the Top Gear sense of the word that is. Still, "they are also co-incidentally" what he actually believes. This ambiguity creates a real emotional awkwardness in his audience which rarely fails to induce laughter.

Did Lee really attend the same school as Richard Hammond? I suspect he did, but the stories of their time there together probably hold only the very slightest grain of truth, if any. Does it matter? Of course not. Lee finishes a tale of his heroic, but ultimately thankless, rescue of Hammond from bullies through the use of his privileged status as a library monitor with the proviso "now, that story about Richard "The Hamster" Hammond (he isn't a real hamster) isn't true, but I think it tells us a lot about him". Such is Lee's relaxed manner with the audience, and the rapid rapport he builds up with us, that we all nod along in agreement. Hammond is indeed an ungrateful rat of a man who selfishly sold us out. Us, the rightful heirs to any profit to be made from book or TV deals resulting from the near-fatal crash which we, the licence fee payer, funded. Relax, it's a "joke".

Like Hammond, the cider manufacturer Magners was also the recipient of Lee's ire. Not only had they appropriated their TV ad strapline "Give it to me straight, like a pear cider made from 100% pear(s)" from the common and varied usage the phrase had enjoyed within the Lee family for generations but, more painfully, they had ruined Steve Earle's The Galway Girl for Lee by using it in a previous TV ad. The song had been Lee's favourite of the past decade or so and had held warm associations with his wife, the comedian Bridget Christie.

Stewart Lee is always keen to push the boundaries of his chosen artform and closed his set by confronting what he described as "the final comics' taboo". This, in his words, "is to do something sincerely, and to do it well" and involved him performing The Galway Girl (albeit with a couple of comic additions) with an acoustic guitar, accompanied by an on-loan fiddle player. Whilst this form of finale is almost the stylistic polar opposite of the surreally dark "vomiting into the anus of Christ" skit which closed his 90s comedian show of 2005/06, it still surprised his audience. It was heartfelt and the audience saw that. Highly recommended.