The Roquefort Files

A few weeks couple of months back I was in Istanbul, probably for the last time this year. Leigh is safely back in Edinburgh, and this was a final visit before her fellowship ended. I was there to function as Leigh’s arm candy at the end of term party (where’s that irony mark when you [...]

I have been neglecting the RF, and for this I can only apologise. The Project is occupying all of my attention these days; that, and gallivanting around Europe like I’m some sort of crazed middle-class professional determined to screw the environment with high-altitude CO2 emissions before this sort of irresponsible behaviour is outlawed for the [...]

Leigh & I spent the week in Barcelona a month or so back and is my wont (the Project is occupying all my writing time these days), I’ve only just managed to get round to writing about it. Our pension was right at the top of La Rambla, Barcelona’s main pedestrian drag. On our first [...]

(Right: it’s about time I finished off documenting the ‘Fynn’s Australian adventure. It’s hard to imagine how different things must be after the horrific flooding earlier this month — thankfully, Chris, Leyla & Scarlet are fine.) After having spent Friday messing about on the water, Saturday was a designated drinking day. That afternoon Chris guided [...]

Chris met the three of us at Brisbane airport and ferried us back to his new house in his dependable, pie-warmer-equipped Forester. We said hello to Leyla and their new daughter Scarlet, and I was amazed once again how natural it is to say hi to these guys even though we often don’t see each [...]

We all relaxed perceptibly after the gig. Borderline shambolic it may have been, but we’d belted out some great tunes and by gigging the new album we’d come satisfyingly full circle from our first recording sessions almost two years ago. Friday was spent in gentle recuperation from the stresses of the gig but the day [...]

The ‘Fynn are on tour. Two intercontinental flights — a blur of letterbox-sized movies, insomnia, meals with no name (what’s the correct term for a snack comprising chocolate, nuts, cheese and crackers served at 3am in some indeterminate subcontinental time zone?) and thousand-yard, sweaty-faced stares in 747 toilet mirrors — have brought us to Australia. [...]

From Orléans we hared down the toll motorways towards Bergerac, stopping only a couple of times to refuel either the car or ourselves. At one particularly green and pleasant rest stop, we snacked on baguettes and sweaty cheese as a TGV whooshed incongruously past sounding more like an airliner than a train. We turned off [...]

I felt like a new man when I woke up in Bruges. Which was nice, because the me of the day before was a broken-down alcoholic with impending liver failure. After checking out of the hostel we pottered into the middle of the old, walled town of Bruges. It was a lovely little place, full [...]

Ash and I are in Belgium, en route to a villa in the Dordogne where we will recline in the soleil and make idle chat for a week. It took us two days to get here. Two days of pain. We caught an overnight ferry from Newcastle to Ijmuiden in the Netherlands. The journey to [...]