Return to Ross-shire

I flew to Inverness and then travelled further north still, passing the oil rigs, so massively huge and all lit up, in for repair at Invergordon. What a spectacular sight! Further down towards the sea, another one sparkled on the horizon.
Earlier, I was taken to Strathpeffer for a proper hot chocolate, breaking my stern no-cholesterol diet for a gorgeous silky, delicous cupful of luxury.
A notice rather meanly forbade people from photographing the highly photogenic chef in her tall paper hat, her sweet little face earnestly frowning as she prepared chocolates in the kitchen.
Strathpeffer is a little Victorian town that has a bandstand and a famous pavilion where the Beatles played even after they had become mega, honouring their earlier commitments, the gentlemen.
In the evening, we visited Henry the woodsman and sat in the Logtogon, his wooden house in the trees strong enough to have an open fire in an old car-wheel. The Logtogon is on its way to being a recording venue, I think; it is wildly dramatic, standing in the middle of the woods like a Native American Indian dwelling, and accessed by a ladder in the dark. I hope I get to record there one day because is the most amazing place and I imagine all that wood makes a superbly resonant environment, particularly for singing.
Friday was studio-day; the studio is in a modern house in the middle of fields, fields, fields; Pete is the engineer and his mum, who is 91 and a painter, lives there too. You sing in a living room, looking out of the windows at little birds foraging in the hedges in the cold sunshine.
I was there to do the vocal on Glasgow Train, the last track of the album to be finished. Martin had craftily taken it from my control-freak hands and Joe-Meeked it into a joyously mad track with drums, vibes, guitars and bass, that bowls along and makes you grin from ear to ear, so it was a cinch to sing over. That left time to record another track too, using a Fender Stratocaster and a Fender Nocaster, clanging and twanging and singing and songing.
Then it was all-the-way-back, part driving through glorious Highland dawn, and part training it, reading Joe Boyd's riveting account of the 1960s, White Bicycles.. What a weekend to remember!
Photos: Strathpeffer Spa Pavilion (Roy Orbison played there too!), oil rig at Invergordon (it was me that was lopsided, not the rig!), Martin Stephenson plays Pete's little inlaid bossa-nova guitar, sunrise in Ross-shire.