Subtitled: The North is my True North

Subtitled: Scot-ish, but not Scottish*

Subtitled: Where are you from?

A month after having moved I’m finally getting around to publishing this. It has been a busy month.

I should have realised when I moved southwards for the first time in my life a few years ago (only by 30km or so) that that was just the beginning and things weren’t going to stabilise there. It’s a shame: I always thought I’d end up even further north, but it’s not to be; North of England isn’t really north enough for me, but it’s better than nothing.

Having recently left Aberdeen I wanted to write something about it. I feel like Aberdeen unfairly gets a bad rap, but I am actually the only person I know that rates it - it is my “home” (my second after Huddersfield). So I’ll try not to focus on the negatives since I feel like that is the majority of opinion, but the one thing I will mention is the oil and gas legacy and the fact that what happened was the exact opposite of “Private sufficiency: Public luxury” was unfortunate - in my opinion the worse thing about Aberdeen is getting to or from there from literally anywhere else; Better transport links between the rest of Scotland should have been built decades ago instead of relying on air. Aberdeen really is miles away from everywhere else.

Most of our time up here was been spent in the country-side, but we’ve lived (in order) in the: city, suburbs, village, middle of nowhere, and finally back in the city. So we’ve been fortunate enough to experience a lot of different parts of Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

The best bits:

• Long summer nights. Summer is so tiring because you forget to go to bed and then it’s light again a few hours later. I absolutely love it though.
• Multi-cultural (Perhaps less so now?). But at one point you’d come across French, Nigerian, Spanish, Italian, Scottish, Polish, etc in just one walk through town. It’s a beautiful thing
• Stunning architecture if you look for it; The granite buildings genuinely do sparkle - unfortunately it does seem to take a certain angle of sunlight, etc so doesn’t happen very often.
• A city surrounded by beautiful countryside.
  • There is a lot of nature on your doorstep that seems to get overlooked by a lot of people in Aberdeen:
    • Tullos
    • Kincorth
    • Tollohill
    • Brimmond Hill (and Elrick!)
    • Cove Coastal path

    All of these are within running distance of the city centre.

  • Further afield are things like Bennachie (which you can bus + run to)
• Stunning beaches. There is obviously the huge stretch of beach front just minutes from the city centre, but my favourites have been Collieston and Cruden bay.
• Wildlife. Being able to see seals in Bridge of Don or Newburgh, seeing deer at Tullos and Tollohill, seeing otters in the river Dee.
• Butteries

All cities and towns have their issues and rundown parts of the high-street. Frustratingly all cities and towns also have those businesses and events that attracted you to that place (friggin’ Belmont Cinema) that then seem to close down or stop running a few weeks after you move. But at the time of writing these wonderful places are as good as anywhere else in the UK (or world?) for food and coffee (if you end up in a chain coffee-shop in Aberdeen you’ve gone wrong):

• Rosa’s Sicilian Pizzeria
• Craftsman
• Grounded
• Parx (the veggie breakfast burrito is better than the meat once since it has veggie square sausage instead of bacon)
• Cafe 52
• Cafe Boheme (the vegan items are insanely good)
• Cafe Harmony (completing the trifecta of Cafes)
• Cult of Coffee
• Third Circle
• Foodstory
• Hammerton

Those are my favourites, but there are more. Aberdeen has also treated me well for music venues. Being far away from everywhere it mostly seems to get smaller bands or huge bands, but I love:

• Music hall (Mostly older bands touring here, like Suede, Embrace, The Wombats)
• Lemontree (saw Shelf Lives and Lambrini Girls, amongst others)
• Cafe Drummonds (saw SPINN here, massively underated band from Liverpool)
• Tunnels (Lots of great things: Dead Pony, Plasticine, Gomez (that was a messy Sunday night))
• Krakatoa (saw Coach Party here)

I do have some regrets, but not from living there, just things I didn’t get to do that I thought I’d have time for “one day”, but that day never came. This is a definite downside to me patiently waiting and not demanding things:

• Only got the the Cairngorms for the Lonach Gathering, never to explore anywhere else or for running
• Never got over to the West coast
• Never got to Orkney or Shetland (and there is a ferry from Aberdeen!)
• Never got to Belladrum (gutted - in my head that was one of my must dos before leaving)
• Never got to Inverness

So much of my life (those winters cycling! Oh my), my daughters’ childhoods, our marriage, etc was made in Aberdeen that I was always going to have fond memories of it and be sad about leaving. Could Aberdeen have technically been anywhere else? Yeah, sure, but it wasn’t. My memories are rooted in the countryside, the city and the coastline. I’m just grateful that I realised it wasn’t an Aberdream, but beautiful reality.

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* Not because I don’t want to be, just because I can’t claim to be (my daughters on the other-hand just are Scottish). If there was a way I could officially give up my nationality and become Scottish I would do it in a heartbeat; I was holding out for a Scottish passport and re-joining the EU becoming a thing for a long time; Will forever be proud I voted for independence.

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I am really enjoying Cantilever. I really lucked out and I think the first new album when I signed up was Shaking Hand’s debut, available a full two weeks earlier on Cantilever than its normal release - the Up the Ante(lope) track is fantastic. Since then the only other 2026 release (it is only the start of February though) has been Dry Cleaning’s Secret Love. The rest has been quite a mix of dates (and genres - excellent). A lot from 2025 and some as early as 2003. Interestingly, although only two have been “new new” nearly all the rest have been “new” to me because they just passed by me in recent years. So technically Cantilever is working for me as a new music fix. It’s exciting seeing what new album is going to be added and at the same time getting as many listens in to an album you like before it leaves.

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In addition to Cantilever, as just mentioned, in an effort to keep a “new new” music fix I’ve also been listening to Rapal and BBC Introducing in Scotland via BBC Sounds. I was going to try to keep up with 6music’s New Music Fix as well, but I can’t commit to listening to that volume of output since it’s on every day (a weekly show, fair enough) and quite often we are eating tea when it’s on on the radio anyway so I listen to it that way. I have been wondering, since I’m still paying for Spotify (family plan), whether it’s just daft that I’ve not used Spotify at all in January, but then again I’ve paid my TV License for years and never listened to Rapal nor BBC Introducing in Scotland (more fool me).

However, there’s still stuff on my radar that I want to listen to. These releases so far this year:

• Jenny On Holiday: Quicksand Heart
• Ailbhe Reddy: Kiss Big
• Another Country \(\): Cursed Frame
• TeeZandos: Still Odd

The first three of these are available on Bandcamp so I can avoid Spotify that way, but is streaming for free on Bandcamp actually any better than listening on Spotify? Not really is it? If I buy them, then sure. But that’s if. I don’t really feel comfortable any more “owning” electronic media as I don’t trust companies won’t just pull the files or in my ability to store all the files long-term. I think I’d prefer to purchase physical media, but the number of CDs and tapes that I lost during our last house move makes me upset to go down that route again. I’d love to get into vinyl again, maybe just starting with my albums of year for the last few years, but it’s unfortunately not very practical at the moment. Still thinking about what to do here - I don’t have a good solution yet.

I am keeping a list of everything I’ve listened to on Cantilever, but I’ll probably publish this at the end of the year.

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Since I stopped using Duolingo how have things gone?

For Italian I started reading I Giorni Dell’Abbandono - it has taken me a whole month to read one chapter. To be fair I’ve been quite busy, but it is legitimately slow going. I’m probably at toddler level Italian and should be reading kids’ books as opposed to a proper novel. I tend to read it sentence by sentence with the English version open at the same time but only looking at that as a last resort after the first resort of using Google Translate - there are lots of words and/or forms of words I don’t know! It is interesting (I suppose obviously) how much is not a literal translation and some short parts of sentences don’t even exist in the Italian version, but I guess sound better that way in English. E.g this in the English version:

I roused myself only when I heard the sound of a car parking in the little square of our building.

vs this in the Italian:

Mi riscossi solo quando sentii il rumore di un’auto che parcheggiava.

No mention of “in the little square of our building”, but it would sound odd without that in English.

For Scottish Gaelic I’ve started listening to the SpeakGaelic podcast on BBC Sounds. I should have started years ago, at the same time I did Duolingo, but who has time for these things? It’s interesting just listening and not seeing the words at all - fortunately/amazingly all that time on Duolingo has rubbed off a bit as for some words I can hear them and then see the word in my head and know how it’s spelt (sounding nothing like it’s spelt). I’m trying to do a minimum of one episode a week as I think I can fit that in. That means there is enough to keep me going for well over a year.

For a bit more fun (and linked to changing up how I’m listening to music this year) I’m also listening to Rapal on Radio Nan Gàidheal. I don’t understand it, but I keep hearing the same phrases, so hopefully eventually I’ll figure it out. It’s a new music show and argueably more exciting and interesting than BBC Introducing in Scotland (which I’m also listening to, but that’s a different post).

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