I’m particularly pleased that my next reading will be in the city of my birth and of my father’s family, Aberdeen. Come and join me and Rob A Mackenzie at Dead Good Poets in Books and Beans on Belmont Street on Thursday next week (29 October). Times and entry details are here.

I lived in the Granite City only the first three years of my life, but I always loved to visit and somehow felt an enormously strong affinity with the place throughout my childhood especially. Lachrymose little lad I was, “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen” was prone to make me greet but I still liked to sing it in long journeys in the car.

We still have relatives and family friends in Aberdeen and the north-east.  I guess that that family connection has had a strong influence on my use of Scots. The last time I was in the city was to bury my grandmother earlier this year. A remarkable lady, she lived to be only a few weeks shy of 104 and remained independent into her 90s.