I’ve adopted a new fear. I’m not scared of flying, but I am scared of planes flying in to me. In certain wind directions the flight path into Aberdeen airport is right over my work and where I live. Giving that there are several planes an hour landing and taking off, surely that is a greater risk to me than ever being involved in a plane crash myself?

I’ve been back from holiday now for 2 weeks and only today did I finally take the last of my photos off my camera (this is what has reminded me of my new fear). I’m impressed with the photos from the air, however after spending 2 weeks in Bergen, photos of Aberdeen are quite bleak and dull.

You can click on these photos by the way. They will take you to my Flickr page.

The last photo would confirm that the flight path is indeed over work.  In fact, the last turn the plane makes to line up with the runway is over work (hence the funny angle the picture is taken at). Surely that is a very dangerous part of the approach?  Saying all that though, maybe I should be more concerned that winter is approaching and from the air I can clearly see my work has a grass roof.  Nice in the summer, not in the winter.

As you’ll have seen from my tweets, Emma and I headed up to Shetland over the weekend.  Not been home since January (a complete change from last year when I seemed to be home every 4 weeks!)

Not much had changed. It was nice to be back but there’s still little to do for someone who has seen the island as much as I have.

I went paddling. Water still as cold as ever, global warming has not kicked in yet.

Also got the perfect chance to try out my new camera on some puffins.

And Emma got to meet some Shetland ponies. A highlight of the trip for her.

Back off the boat this morning. Feeling a little home sick but I’m definitely back in the right place, all the excitement of Tescos coming to Shetland would be too much for me.

Andrew with Mia Riddle and Dan Berry

We had one of my favourite sessions on the show this week, Mia Riddle, a folk singer song writer all the way from Brooklyn. She’s fantastic. And she’s only signed in Japan, she really should be signed here… if only I owned a record company.

I got a copy of her new album which is going to be out in about July, very nice. Look out for it.

Here’s my favourite song from the session, City Song:

Sometimes pictures speak more than words. And as I can’t think of any way to describe this photo….

Oh no wait, I’ve thought of something to say… EMMA YOU ARE NOT A CHILD!
David

Sitting on the bus to get from the departure lounge to the plane at Paris Charles De Gaulle (or Charles De Dull as I will now forever call it) airport on Friday night and I over hear the following conversation between a child and his mother…

CHILD: “Mummy, Mummy, I suppose Halloween is a very dangerous time for planes….!”

MOTHER: “Why’s that?”

CHILD: “Well it’s obvious isn’t it….? Egging.”

Now I was thinking he may have confused Halloween for Guy Fawkes night, in which case there would be fireworks in the sky, I could see the sense in that… but egging? A plane? That would be some good aim.

It was the only thing to smile about at Charles De Dull on Friday, as I was put in a very bad mood while I spent a total of 3 hours in it.

The UK use the Great British Pound. The Czech Republic (the location of our weeks holiday) use the Crown. France use the Euro. Seeing as we were only going to be in France for 3 hours in each direction, it didn’t really make any sense to take out any Euros from the Post Office, instead I’d just take some from the cash machine at Charles De Dull.

On the way out we ended up catching our flight from one of the older terminals of De Dull where there were plenty of cash machines but really no where to eat. In fact once you were through security there were no shops, restaurants or even toilets. Not a good plan for the over prepared David who always turns up to airports hours before he needs to.

On the way back (on Friday) we were flying from one of the newer (possibly brand new?) terminal…. great, you’d think. But lessons from Terminal 5 at Heathrow show that a new airport terminal isn’t always a good thing.

Plenty of shops. Plenty of restaurants. Even Playstation 3’s to play while you wait for your flight. But NO cash machines. None what so ever. One incredibly unhelpful French man informed us that once we were past security there were no cash machines and that we’d have to pay for anything with cash (which we didn’t have) or credit card (I’m a student, the last thing I need is a credit card).

One shop accepted British money! Hurray!! We had a £5 note, and £5 in coins. Except they didn’t except coins. Fair enough I suppose, except we didn’t know this till we were at the counter. And thanks to the terrible airport pricing and even worse exchange rate, our bottle of coke, Mars Bar and packet of crisps came to more than £5. But rather than letting us put one of the items back, the snotty French shop assistant refused to serve us.

Grrr… ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS SPEND SOME OF MY MONEY IN THEIR STUPID FRENCH AIRPORT! Is that too much to ask?

Finally we did find 2 Euros on us which was enough for Emma to get a packet of crisps. We didn’t dare go back to the shop that refused to sell us goods, so instead we found another. Yet this shop you were required to show your boarding pass before you bought goods, even for a packet of crips. It wasn’t surprising that there were several boarding passes lying around that people had dropped, how they were going to manage to fly I don’t know. The daft thing is, Emma managed to get through security without showing her boarding pass (I know this, because it was in my pocket), yet had to show her pass to get a packet of crisps. Madness.

People have said for years that the French are rude, ignorant, full of themselves (I could go on), but I didn’t really understand this properly till Friday.

If we’d been travelling Prague to Aberdeen direct, I would have been upset to see the lights of Aberdeen at 9.30 on Friday evening, but instead I was so relieved to see Dyce coming in to view.

… could have been summer.

Global Warming doesn’t seem so bad after all.

David

A round up of what I did on Wednesday then…

I started as being Shetland correspondent for Original.  I say correspondent… I filled them in on Up Helly Aa.  I think I managed to explain it to the best of my ability without giving away the fact I absolutely hate the festival.  I went once as a “Fiddle Box Carrier” and never again.  Every year I get asked by someone “don’t you wish you were in Shetland today?” and I quickly answer with “No!”.

For the purposes of the radio I gave my unbiased view.  But this blog isn’t unbiased. I hate Up Helly Aa.

Other excitements yesterday included using ITunes on my IPod Touch for the first time. Sorry to keep banging on about the IPod Touch but it really is brilliant.  ITunes on the IPod allows you to download music wherever you are (providing you have a wi-fi signal).  Then once you get back to your computer it all syncs back up nicely so you have the track on your computer just like you’d purchased it there to begin with.

The song in question was a song called Best For Last by Adele. It’s a brilliant song which comes off her moderately good debut album 19. I’d had the song stuck in my head all day but I was miles away from my computer, so it was time to give ITunes a whirl.  Easy… very easy. Infact it was so easy I almost thought for a second it hadn’t worked because it was very quick and very painless.  Certainly the future.

Oh, and I’ve only heard Adele’s album across an office floor… maybe it’ll grow on me. Music often does.

And yesterday evening was surreal.  A trip to the music hall to see soul legends Eddie Floyd and Geno Washington.  Combined, Tom and I must have been the youngest people there, but it was still interesting to see. Although being top of the bill, Eddie was on first… so we actually missed him. But Geno was on top form and as well as good music he was having good banter with the crowd.

And then on my walk home I walked past three seperate buskers on Union Street who were all equally spaced out by at least three minutes walking time, and they were all playing Wonderwall by Oasis.  Saying that, even I can play Wonderwall by Oasis on the guitar. Possibly says something about the quality of modern day buskers.

And that was Wednesday.

David

Emma and I were back this morning from an excellent weekend in Shetland.

On the way up on the ferry I did wonder exactly why we were heading up north. This thought was mainly fuelled by the force 9 gale we were steaming through. Once every 5 minutes Emma would slide from one end of the cabin to the other. I think she too was wondering “why?!”

All that was made up for when we arrived in Shetland. The weather wasn’t spectacular, there wasn’t much happening and there was hardly anyone around… but I still got a couple of days to show Emma the ’sights’ (including my local pub), and take plenty of photos.

Completely knackered now though. Amazing, even after 9 hours sleep (that’s about 4 hours more than normal) on a perfectly calm ferry, I still feel totally zonked.