It's 603 miles to Ullapool from here: I set off on the train for a stopover in Inverness on Friday, where I stayed in a room so hot that I thought that the radiator had been left on. And that was in the north of Scotland, not in London where the temperatures are nothing short of searing.
I'd been worried that the bus to Ullapool itself might not take my guitar. It was very cramped but apart from that, no problem. The journey between Inverness and Ullapool is utterly beautiful. The mountains appear to be covered in luminous green velvet, dotted with little jewelled trees. What you lose in art galleries and street art in urban environments is more than made up for in a constant streaming gallery provided by nature for travellers passing through the Highlands.
I was staying with Anne Wood, violinist/viola player who plays for The Raincoats as well as creating her own projects; she is currently learning to play an instrument from South Asia called the Sarangi. Also staying there were Adam Blake, who played sitar for the band Cornershop, and his partner.
After travelling for so many hours, I spent a bit of time wandering around the village, chatting to some bikers who had journeyed from the Lizard in Cornwall to (I think) John O'Groats. They were on their way back home, and were riding a selection of vintage bikes. There was also a Morgan three-wheeler, apparently with a Ford Focus engine in it, which was being driven as a promotional stunt. Well, that won't be running for long then!
On Saturday evening, I played a solo set in The Wee Bar at the Argyll Hotel. It was an inaugural gig for the bar. I've played The Argyll a few times, and sometimes the audience can be a bit rowdy. In this tiny bar, people really listened and we had a good chat afterwards. It was a very charming night, with Anne and Adam playing a delicate and beautiful instrumental on the Sarangi and Sitar respectively to introduce the evening.
On to Sunday and the big event, which was the open mic at The Ceilidh place. There were 21 acts in all, and it really was the most astonishing evening. Local heroine Sot Otter had put the whole weekend together, and this was the culmination of a weekend to address mental health issues in the local community. She asked me to start the evening off, which was great because I could then just sit back and enjoy it all. In front of me, two Scandinavian tourists who'd seen me walking along with my guitar and asked me if they could follow me to see where the music was happening, sat and filmed and enjoyed it just as much as the audience, almost all of whom were also performing. There was so much: a little girl playing violin with her mum, a funny song about the scourge of campervans and their poor etiquette, lots of harmonising, cover versions, traditional songs, people singing their own songs, a poet, Anne and Adam improvising, Sot's lovely song about a house she'd lived in in Canterbury, an oddly moving rendition of Pharrell Williams' Happy by the choir. Beginners followed consummate professionals, and Sot and Anne underpinned a lot of it with keyboards, bass and viola. The audience had time, patience and applause for everyone, and at one point I was moved to tears. It was quite literally heartwarming, and more than served its purpose. I thought of all those people, many of them single and potentially solitary: instead of sitting weeping into their whiskey in front of the TV here they all were socialising, singing and collaborating, all ages, all genders. How very lovely.
The journey back was all done in a day of watching the landscape change across and down the British Isles, a huge deer staring into space in a field in Scotland, a chestnut-coloured hare lit up by golden evening sunlight in a field in England.
You know what, I am so glad to be a gigging musician. Sometimes my guitar feels too heavy to bear, my feet hurt and I'm dog-tired. Trains get cancelled, buses are late. I got stranded in Munich once. I'm getting older and what I'm doing feels sillier in comparison to what other people do. But I don't care. I'm doing it now, and inspired by those wonderful women blues musicians, will carry on until I have to stop. These adventures into happiness are what it's all about.
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