Thursday 28 June 2001

This morning we had another batch of Gentle Shepherd auditions, and the cast list is filling up nicely. I've been away from it for a while, as I spent the last 6 days on Orkney, making radio programmes at the St Magnus Festival. It's always wonderful going there, as the place is scattered with ancient monuments from several millennia, and the people are unfailingly friendly. We recorded everything from a Chilean vet singing 'Scotland the Brave' to Thomas Zehetmair playing Martinu.

It's inevitable on these trips that a series of running jokes develops amongst the crew, as Orkney place names like Hoy and Twatt  are sitting ducks for easy humour in the course of a hard day.  But my favourite this year was our irresistible alternative lyric to Aerosmith's Walk This Way (Aerosmith and Run DMC if you're under forty): 'She took me to Waulkmill Bay'. I think it's the juxtaposition of the mindless riff and Tyleresque screaming with the tranquil beauty at the place itself.

I would have been flying back home yesterday with the presenter Linda Ormiston (who got an OBE last week!) but the weather was foul - spectacular electric storms which added a certain drama to the concert we were recording at lunchtime. On Monday it had been beautiful - I set up a mobile office on the grass in the churchyard of St Magnus Cathedral, with Linda's iBook and lots of paper strewn about, and I got sunburnt, sporting a fetching daisy chain made for me by John Mark Ainsley. But yesterday reports from the airport were less than encouraging, and rather than risk a no-show from the vomit comet (as the Orcadians call the little plane to Scotland) we ran for the ferry instead.  On the mainland was a nice man waiting for us with a brand new hired Mercedes - he'd brought it all the way from Inverness so we let him drive us back there, and then set off down through the spectacular scenery of the A9. I didn't get home until midnight, but on the way south the warm air and the gentle light make it feel like late afternoon.