Just got back from a devine weekend of gigs and relaxing (kind of) in Stornoway. I love that place, I love the harbour, I love the people, I love the new arts centre, I love the fact that they have a wonderful festival (we didn’t play it this year, but we did last year, and what a marvellous event), I even love the name of the place, Stornoway.

The are two ways of getting to Stornoway, on the Island of Lewis, in the Outer Hebridean Islands in Northern Scotland. You can be boring and take the plane, or you can take the more romantic (if slightly more rusty) route, and board the ferry from one of a few places. Our chosen point of departure was Ullapool, yet another sickeningly pretty Scottish harbour town which boast music festivals, fresh fish, and Highlanders who can be as quirky as they are friendly.

The ferry ride takes several hours, and takes you past rolling lochs, almost to open sea, but there’s always a little bit of land visible on one side of the boat or other.

It may look a little dreary, but it’s quite pretty when you’re there!

We arrived safely (I swear, the ferry is rustier than it was last year!), and made our way to the new arts centre in Stornoway, newly finished since our last visit. The lady running the place is a slight, but very very tough woman called Alex MacDonald. Trust me when I say, you wanna stay on this broad’s good side. She’s a laugh a minute, but you don’t want to be drunk and disorderly at closing time in her bar! The boys in the band have a way of giving people nicknames (those who know EricaLea might be interested to know that she’s now officially Punky Brewster, cause she’s short and sassy, and American.), and they decided that Alex should be “wee shetland pony” – she’s just a wee lady, but she’ll brook no bullshit, she’ll bloody well stand her ground, and there’s an element of cheeky mischief there.

Suffice it to say, we liked her a lot!

The An Lanntair Arts Centre was an appropriately flexible space to hold a rock concert in, or a film screening, or a sit down celtic music concert, or a school play.

Here we are, being sensible as usual during soundcheck. We’re a very sensible bunch. Oh, and that’s Jamie flashing his arse.

There was plenty of fly space above the stage for sets, big cinema projector (with accompanying modern sound system, including Cinema subwoofers – WOOF!), and a stadium seating area which all concertina-ed away nicely to make a large open space for people to dance, mosh, or just stand and hold their beers. Our crowd did all three!

Oh, ok, they didn’t really mosh, I’m just fondly remembering Montelago. But we had vast amounts of fun, and got to play 2 sets rather than just the one. Took a half set or so to warm up, but I have to say how much I’m enjoying the new stuff at the moment. Looking forward to recording the new album. Happy snaps galore, here we are (sans Mark, for reasons which will become clear later) after the gig:

After the gig, the four of us in the photo above strolled back to our guest house, and marvelled at how lively a small town could be on a saturday night – there were (mostly drunk) young folk all over the place, and cars cruising up and down. I suppose the smoking ban helps to make the streets more lively these days – everyone heads outside for a ciggie these days.

Anyway, here’s the lights on the harbour that night. Look how glassy the water is!

Now, dear readers, is the time to tell you why Mark was not with us for our stroll home that night. It is time to tell you the Wonderous Tale of Mark and Miss Sweden (real name not used for her privacy, though I’ve been assured that they don’t care about such things. But I do!). It’s a happy shiny tech-age fairytale about finding love where you least expect it.

It all started back when Mark first launched his MySpace site. He’s been rapidly building up a “friends” list which I’m sure will one day rival Robbie Williams’. One day, he recieved a message from Miss Sweden. I don’t even know what the message was, but it was enough for him to write back to her, and then she wrote back to him again, and then he wrote back to her, and she wrote back to … well, you get the picture. This has been going on since he was back in Australia, and she’s been living in Stornoway, working (as it so happens) at the arts centre where we were due to be playing.

Messaging on MySpace graduated on to emails, which lead to text messages once he reached the UK, and then finally, a few days before we were due to travel to Stornoway, they pushed the relationship along a little more, and moved on to real phone conversations!

Finally, we get to Stornoway. All we’d been hearing about from Mark for two weeks now is how much he’s looking forward to finally meeting Miss Sweden in the flesh, and at last, the moment of truth had come. We arrived into Stornoway, did our soundcheck, and then Mark instructed us – nay, upbraided us almost – that he didn’t even want us anywhere nearby when he finally got to set eyes on Miss Sweden. We made ourselves scarce, with the understanding that we’d meet for dinner at 6pm at the arts centre restaurant.

6pm rolled around, no sign of Mark. 6.15, still no sign. 6.25, nada. We exchanged knowing looks at the dinner table, and proceeded to order our meals without him. (An aside – the Stornoway arts centre restaurant has amazing food!) The girl taking our orders shyly asked whether we weren’t supposed to have 5 people in our party.

“No,” says Simmo. “I think he has something better going on… no offense to your restaurant or anything.”

She smiled slyly back and said something like, “yes, I may have heard a rumour like that. We’ve all been so nervous all day!!”

I kinda felt like we were the T-Birds out of Grease, and the girls at the arts centre were the Pink Ladies, and we were all peering in on this budding relationship with curiosity, not wanting to butt in, but still SO curious about how it was going to work out. (“tell me maw-ah, tell me maw-ah, like does he have a car?)

Finally as we’re finishing up our meal, who should walk in but the most gorgeous real-life fairytale couple I’ve ever seen. I challenge you to find a couple who look better together than Mark and Miss Sweden – it’s actually quite nauseating. I had to run to the loo to throw up quickly. Ugh.

I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen two people so instantly into each other. Mark said that she’d made the comment, “she knew she was staying behind in Stornoway for some reason.” People looking at photos of Mark since then have said that they’ve never seen him actually really smile in photos, not with a truly happy smile, not like he is in all the photos you’ll be seeing from now on. Flights have been booked to Sweden, and plans are being made for trips to Australia, it’s looking pretty serious.

He just walked in a moment ago (we’re back in Edinburgh now) to check that I assure you, dear reader, that this isn’t some Rock-Tour-Fling, it’s serious. I reckon he’s spent about 2 hours on the phone to her today. Aaawww.

Honestly though, I have to admit that I was a little nervous for Mark about this whole thing before we got to Stornoway. Could have ended in horrible awkwardness, or catastrophic disaster. I couldn’t have been more wrong though – she’s fabulous. She’s gorgeous, though that’s not a criteria for approval in my book. But d’you know what made me realise that she really was a good sort of lass? Turns out she’s a massive Buffy/Firefly/Joss Whedon fan. Instant rubber stamp of approval, plain and simple. And I suppose it helps that she’s an absolute sweetie to boot.

Rest assured though, dear reader, we’ve warned Mark that if all this soppy romance stuff makes him start playing like Kenny G, we’ll have words with him.

But it just goes to show. MySpace isn’t all bad. And internet romances can and do happen successfully!

But enough soppy love stories, on with the ROCK TOUR!!

As long time readers will remember, Stornoway can be an interesting place when it comes to the attitude towards Sundays. As in, almost EVERYTHING is closed on a Sunday. The first time a flight left Stornoway on a Sunday, not that long ago (could have been less than a decade ago), it was a big thing.

But the plane is literally the only way off the island on a Sunday. Not even the big passenger ferry runs on a Sunday. We might be rockstars, but we can’t afford to fly yet, not with all our gear. So we found ourselves once again on Lewis with a day to explore, and a car to explore with. We all piled into our Kia Sedona (AKA a couch on wheels – very comfy but handles like a beached whale), with the two lovebirds in the back (barf) and set out to discover new and wonderous things.

We ended up driving south, down to the Isle of Harris (which counts as a separate island, though it is connected to Lewis by a little bit of land). The Hebrides have some incredible beaches going on, and we found this one little bay with a long shallow beach, and water which was turquoise in just the right light. Perfect for paddling.

After much time on this glorious beach, it was time to head back north again, to one of my favorite places in Scotland – the Standing Stones of Calenish. Long time readers may remember our last trip to Stornoway, and our visit to the Standing Stones then. Looking back on that blog entry, I realise how flippant I was about it then. I think that it was partly due to the fact that when we were there last time, most of the Hebridean Celtic Festival seemed to be there too. That kinda sapped the magic out of the place.

This time there was just the six of us, and I felt a real sense of the majesty of these rocks, lugged from god only knows where, 5000 years before I was born, and still standing today (mostly).

Dave felt something other than a sense of majesty, I fear:

Simmo found the rock which had stolen his hair, and I can tell you, he was pretty dark about it:

Mark was overwhelmed by the stones (or by love, one or the other.)

Here we all are, lined up quite accidentally against whichever stone reflects our relative height. Goldilocks and the Four (rolling) Stones. Goldilocks (ie Miss Sweden) is behind the camera:

Here’s the only pic you’ll get of Miss Sweden (protecting her privacy, even if she thinks she doesn’t need it – they “want the whole world to know”, bless them. Don’t they know that Mark has stalkers? You know who you are ). Look carefully, there she is!

Next stop is Spain tomorrow. If you will, please say a prayer to whatever god you might pray to, asking for clemency for my beloved violin which must travel in the hold, with all these stupid travel restrictions in place for british airports.

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