Closing the circle: So long and thanks for all the (music) Fish

For many thousands of women and men of a certain age, today sees the end of a musical era. A final farewell gig in Glasgow tonight sees the bringing to a finale a musical journey which has, for the man at the heart of it and many of his fans, lasted more than 40 years. After his final live show tonight with his band in the Glasgow O2 Academy, Scottish rock singer, actor, award-winning broadcaster (on Planet Rock) and writer, Fish, real name Derek William Dick, will retire from the music industry.

I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the fact about Fish that nearly every article about him starts with, namely ‘former frontman for progressive rock band Marillion' which is indeed the guise in which many (most?) of his fans first encountered his music and his thought-provoking, clever and personal lyric writing. It's somewhat ironic to start there, as his solo career, since leaving Marillion in 1988 has been four to five times as long as his Marillion career and has produced 11 studio albums and 21 (!) live albums. His final album, Weltschmerz, released in 2020, is perhaps as fine a set of songs as he has ever produced, widely acclaimed as a career high, something he has said he wanted to end his career with (although you can have fun debating best and favourite albums with his fans!).

Fish and his wife Simone have sold up their home and recording studio near Haddington (20 miles east of Edinburgh) and moved to the Outer Hebrides, to run a croft on the island of Berneray. In November 2023, he struck a deal with Primary Wave Music, a leading independent publisher of iconic and legendary music who acquired his master royalties and writer’s share for for the songs he wrote and recorded with Marillion. He has wound up his Chocolate Frog record company and his Fish online music and merchandise shop and he is retiring properly. Fish has said all along that he is a writer who can sing (rather than a singer who can write songs) and he means to work on his autobiography, screen plays and… who knows what else? And, after tonight, he will be the artist formerly known as Fish, that identity being put to bed so he can resume his life as Derek.

Fish's solo career has been characterised by a warm and generous relationship with his fans, with 'meet-and-greets' and numerous fan weekends and conventions, often in continental Europe and some in Haddington in East Lothian, Scotland, where Fish has been based for over 30 years. Throughout lockdown, and until recently, Fish also live streamed on Facebook from his home near Haddington almost every Friday evening for two hours from 6pm UK time, engaging in a live interactive session with his fans through their Facebook comments on the live stream. These 'Fish on Friday' sessions, named after his Planet Rock radio show, were hugely popular with fans and Fish has said in interview that it was as much for his own mental well-being during lockdown, as it was for the fans. Nevertheless, it was a great and pretty generous commitment of his time and energy and was much enjoyed and appreciated by many.

His final, farewell UK 'Road to the Isles Tour' (a reference to Fish and Simone's move to the Outer Hebrides) was, I think, meant to happen after the release of Weltschmerz but Covid etc got in the way. In the social media groups in which Fish's fans gather virtually, it has been an intensely anticipated 15 date tour of small-medium sized (and largely sold-out) venues, one of the largest of which is the O2 Academy in Glasgow for last night's and tonight's two final shows.

I'm not a completely disinterested bystander. In those pre-Internet days, my friends and I first came across Marillion and Fish in early 1982, when demo tracks were being played on the 'Forth Bridges' Monday late-night rock show on Forth FM in Edinburgh. Already hooked on Yes, Pink Floyd and Genesis as part of a wider teenage diet of heavy and classic rock, this was heady stuff for us, with a giant singer who came from our part of the world, as a 'Dalkeith boy' from the neighbouring county of Midlothian (we lived in East Lothian) playing music that sounded like nothing else being produced at the time. We'd scour Sounds, the rock-friendly weekly music paper for titbits of news and I sent off for back copies of Marillion's fan magazine, The Web which duly arrived in the post accompanied by a signed photo of Fish in greasepaint and wearing a horned helmet. 

In August 1982, my friend Pete and I, keen to see them play live, made the long journey by bus from Scotland to the Theakston Festival at Nostell Priory near Wakefield, to see Marillion play their first festival (at our first festival too), supporting Jethro Tull. That weekend, EMI signed up Marillion and, soon after, we were on tenterhooks for the release of their first record, the single Market Square Heroes. That release happened around the first time we saw them in Scotland, with a gig at the tiny Edinburgh Nite Club in November 1982. In our memories, the highlight of this night (apart from seeing their epic song 'Grendel' performed live) was probably the band asking us to help them load their gear into the van afterwards, and meeting Fish's Dad (he was very friendly, asking us if we were waiting to see Derek!). This kind of thing didn't happen to us at other gigs! A couple of years later, Fish spent some time living with his parents in North Berwick and we would spot him in the pub and out and about. He'd go to Hibernian FC football matches with friends of ours who were also Hibees. Incidentally, I have an autograph that a friend working in North Berwick's Galbraith supermarket asked Fish to sign for me in March 1984, as he knew I was a big fan. That friend then promptly misplaced the autograph and only found it 31 years later in a container on a mantelpiece when he was clearing out his late father's house, and then posted it to me!

It's these connections to his time in North Berwick that makes the Marillion song 'Warm

 Wet Circles' (from their fourth studio album 'Clutching at Straws', in 1987) one of my favourites, with its references to places and people we grew up around.

Copyright unknown

Marillion in their first festival performance at the Theakston Festival, August 1982 (c) Gerald Sables

As history records, Marillion's rise after that first single release in 1982 was fairly meteoric and we were regular attendees at Marillion concerts in various festivals and at Scottish venues for the next six years. The last time I saw Fish performing with Marillion was in the summer of 1988 at a small festival in St Andrews called Fife Aid 2 (raising money for poor farmers overseas?). We had a wild time down at the front row for Marillion's performance, not realising that it would be his last show with the band as he left soon thereafter. That I had seen his last show with Marillion was something I only discovered earlier this year.

Marillion at Fife Aid 2 in August 1988, fatefully Fish's last gig with the band

before he went 'solo in the game' (c) Paul Holmes

His solo career kicked off in Autumn 1989 with a single release, State of Mind, and a UK tour ahead of the launch of his first solo album, 'Vigil in a wilderness of mirrors'. I managed to see his two warm-up gigs for that tour, in Haddington's Corn Exchange in October 1989 (my diary entry says his new solo material was 'very strong (and good)' - incisive assessment!). And then... and then... I wouldn't see Fish play live again for another 21 years which, when I look back is a bit shocking. I bought his first four solo albums as they were released (and loved the first two intensely) but then studies, work, relationships, other priorities, life just got in the way. I have listened to and loved his Marillion and solo music all through those years but just never got to gigs (not just Fish gigs either) or fan conventions. In 2006, the aforementioned lifelong gig pal Pete called me and said I had to buy 13th Star, Fish's latest solo album - he was of course correct that I would love it. A real gem full of wonderful songs. And I was inspired to play catch-up with the albums from the intervening years. A cornucopia of music over the period, with Fish's heart worn on his sleeve for all to hear, and a world view in his lyrics that swung at outrage and optimism in equal measure.


I finally managed to see Fish play live again in 2010, again in Haddington, on the acoustic Fishheads Club tour with Foss Paterson on keyboards and Frank Usher on guitar, in the enormous Saint Mary's Church where one of Fish's weddings took place. I'm so glad I went to that show as I made lifelong friends from a conversation over the course of an hour at the head of the queue with a Dutch couple, Tom and Ellen, whose love of Fish's music had brought them (not for the first time) to Scotland just to see his shows. We hit it off, have been friends ever since and have had some great adventures - thanks to Fish and the power of saying hello!


So when 'Weltschmerz' was released in 2020, and a farewell tour mentioned (and eventually, post-COVID, emerged in 2024/2025), I was keen to go for one last hurrah, to see Fish off into his retirement, taking the chance to enjoy him playing live one final time in 'The Company' of Fish's loyal and enthusiastic fans and with Fish's hugely talented and experienced band of friends and long-time collaborators. We had a moving and joyful night at the first show of the tour, in the Haddington Corn Exchange in February 2025, back together with Pete and Simon, with whom I went to many rock gigs in the 1980s. That was meant to be it. A final night of live Fish to close the circle after 43 years.

But I couldn't pass up the chance of one more show when I found a return ticket for last night's show in Glasgow, Fish's second last ever performance. It didn't matter that, although he has two overlapping but different sets for this final tour, I saw mostly the same set twice. The crowd was up for a great night and sang our hearts out, the band fed off their energy and it was a really special and memorable night of live Fish fandom for me. I can't imagine what the emotions will be like tonight for the final show.

And so, after tonight's show, as Fish sang back in Marillion days: 'The game is over.' Time, indeed, to take that Road to the Isles. After 43 years of amazing music, some great gigs and important friendships forged through that music, with the closing of that circle, I wish Fish and Simone all the best of luck, love and health in the next stage of their life journey, on their Hebridean croft, and also continued success to the rest of Fish's band. And, in the future, we have Fish's proposed autobiography to look forward to, no doubt stimulating much revisiting of his back catalogue!

Slàinte Mhath!

Fish and Simone on Berneray (c) Fish/ Derek Dick

Photos (c) Scot Mathieson except where stated otherwise

Nature wins again... Plankton 1: Nuclear Power 0

Occasionally, just occasionally, this nature boy blog has the chance to be reasonably topical.  I have a blog post in preparation about a wonderful coastal walk we did last week in East Lothian, from which I have extracted one small element to post early. One thing we noticed was that the high tide line of every sandy beach along which we walked was thick with stranded dead or dying jellyfish. They were mostly moon jellies, the very common jellyfish Aurelia aurita. It typically looks like this when stranded:

Stranded Aurelia aurita (moon jellyfish), Gullane beach, 26 June2011

Huge shoals or swarms of these jellyfish are very common in our coastal waters in some summers and mass strandings of this species or other jellyfish species are not uncommon.

Here are a couple of photos of stranded jellyfish en masse at Gullane beach in East Lothian last Sunday (26th June):

Like other jellyfish, this species does have a fringe of stinging tentacles but, in this species, they are not capable of delivering a sting to humans. When the wind is blowing onshore for long enough, these moon jellies, which are very poor swimmers in a current and are thus effectively a part of the zooplankton (albeit very large zooplankton), are forced into the shore and dropped by the falling tide. So what, I hear you ask?

Well, you might have picked up the news today (BBC, Reuters, all the main newspaper websites) that Torness Nuclear Power Station, about 15 miles along the coast from where we were walking, had to shut down both of its Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors on Tuesday afternoon as a swarm of moon jellyfish was clogging the filters of the cooling system's seawater intakes.

According to the BBC's website coverage, the filters: "are designed to prevent seaweed and marine animals entering the cooling system. If these screens become clogged, the reactors are shut down to comply with safety procedures." The Beeb also reported that the "East Lothian plant's operator, EDF Energy, said the shutdown was a precautionary measure and there was never any danger to the public."

It was not a radiological incident... Phew - no need for "Marine Plankton generated this generation-spanning nuclear contamination says nuclear generator" headlines...

But this mass plankton invasion has probably closed one of Scotland's few remaining operational nuclear power stations for a week! Like I said, Plankton 1: Nuclear Power 0...

Incidentally, the BBC coverage also reported, somewhat stupidly, "It is not known why there are so many jellyfish in the area". Duh, it's summer (recent weather notwithstanding) and jellyfish swarms often happen on the East Lothian coast in summer. My Dad recorded numerous incidents over more than 20 years of working on that coastline. And I have no doubt that EDF know that it is a likely occurrence in summer and hence have their contingency shutdown plans. Best not let the obvious facts get in the way of a good mystery for the news though...

Incidentally, my wee brother also picked up on the mass strandings during one of his coast rides on his fabulous Pugsley sand/snow bike, and posted about them here on his Coastkid blog.

The whole incident put me in mind of a wonderful character, Plankton Boy, created for a one-off cartoon strip in an issue of Chris Donald's Viz comic back in 1990 (lovely Google identified it as Viz Comic No: 40 Dated February / March 1990, but sadly no picture was available online). Plankton Boy was "raised by innumerable tiny sea creatures" and had special superhero powers based around plankton. Maybe one was corralling jellyfish towards cooling water intakes... as my brother said earlier "Nature wins again!"

Signs I like #20

Spotted in Longniddry at 20 miles in the Edinburgh marathon on Sunday. Eclectic and maybe profound, but I'm not sure...

Gone Fishin' ... (for marzipan)

So there I was, setting out to write a gig review and it's gone down a slightly odd path, as you'll see. On Friday last week, I was privileged to be able to see Fish, one of my oldest (as in longest-running, rather than in the geriatric sense) musical heroes playing to his home audience in Haddington, East Lothian.  I've posted before about my youthful fandom for Marillion, and my enjoyment  (modest understatement) of their music in their early days. Marillion's "Factor X" for me in those days was their frontman(mountain) Fish, Derek William Dick, all 10 foot tall of him (a bit like Mel Gibson's portrayal of William Wallace in the film "Braveheart" - "blowing fireballs and lightning from his ..." - media coverage of Fish's height has extended to the somewhat hyperbolic at times).

To my teenage progressive rock school friends and I, Fish was something of a rock legend - local (a Lothian boy from up the road in Dalkeith), even more deeply uncool than us (he wore kaftans, ferchrissakes!), and he played with this new band that everyone else thought was completely uncool (although surely the Tolkien reference in Marillion should have been worth a bit of street cred for teenage self-discovery - imagine if they emerged now, post Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings!), playing prog rock music that we, the true cognoscenti, recognised for its instrumental virtuosity, its clever lyrics with their knowing puns, multiple entendres, strong personal, social and environmental messages and propensity to last more than four minutes per track.

At the time, for a generation of young prog rock fans who'd missed out on first-hand live experiences of Peter Gabriel's Genesis, the pre-nutjob ("The Wall") era Pink Floyd, and the classic Yes line-ups of the early and mid-1970s, Marillion were our new hope for complicated prog rock music, great live performances and high quality non-mainstream rock. And Fish, all 12 feet of him, was right up there, front of stage, all enigmatic , greasepaint-mask glowers, theatrical performance and exuberant exhorations to sing along ("You take the High road..."). We even had our own gig culture. Jethro Tull fans may have been given a big balloon to bat about the hall, but we threw buns to Marillion on stage (shouting: "Geezabun! As in "how does an elephant ask for a bun?" No, I don't really know how or why it started but I think it started at Edinburgh Marillion gigs, although I'm happy to be contradicted by evidence). We didn't know why we did it but it was our silliness and we loved it. Not sure if the enjoyment lasted as long for the band though!

Anyway, eventually, as music industry history and media coverage has recorded, Fish left Marillion and went "solo in the game" and has for some 20 years, ploughed his own furrow with a merry band of great musicians, turning out a series of great albums, as well as successful forays into acting, as an award-winning rock DJ on Planet Rock and, if you believe the Scottish Sun, a recent reinvention as an Action Man (welcome to my world, Big Man!)... allegedly giving up on women into the bargain ("I get my thrills from keeping fit now - I've had it with women" - Fish, there's something gone wrong here - I spent my young life keeping fit BECAUSE I couldn't find a woman!). Anyway, it was good to see him looking so fit and well last week!

So, after buying his first three solo albums and loving them, I kind of lost touch with what he was doing for a few years, but picked up again on his solo career a couple of years ago, when the epic 13th Star was released (Thanks for the heads-up at the time Pete M!). I was excited to discover recently that he was embarking on an acoustic tour, with just the three F's - Fish, Frank Usher, long-term guitar collaborator and Foss Patterson, long-term keyboard chum. I was even more excited to find that Haddington in East Lothian, Fish's base these days, was on the tour itinerary. I last saw Fish playing live, donkey's (15? 20?) years ago (what have I been doing?), with his full band (including Frank Usher and Robin Boult on guitars) in the Corn Exchange in Haddington. Last week, he was playing along the road in St Mary's Church, the largest church in East Lothian, even bigger than St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Two gigs, Friday and Saturday nights, with the word on his Facebook site for fans being that both shows would be filmed and recorded for subsequent release, and that the production god Calum Malcolm (who produced Scotland's other finest atmospheric big space music guys, The Blue Nile) is lined up to weave his magic on the recordings - fantastic!

I could only make the Friday night and, even with a side visit to see my folks who live only a few miles away, I still managed to be in the first few to arrive before the show (just like the old days - we had so much spare time as teenage rock fans that Pete, Simon and I used to arrive at gigs HOURS before the show and just hang around - it worked out occasionally, we met Rory Gallagher once, which was great).  I was beaten to the venue by four great Dutch folk and their German pal. Their presence confirmed what I've long suspected. The Dutch are (maybe) crazy. They came over for the long weekend FROM HOLLAND, just to see two Fish gigs in East Lothian. Crazy, but lovely and knowledgeable and absolutely devoted to Fish's solo music and his earlier Marillion material. You have to love proper fans, don't you?! Well done guys, I hope you had a grand weekend! Anyway, we were all there early enough to secure front row seats - brilliant! It was a very simple stage, pared down lighting rig and sound system, single chair for Frank and a Roland piano with stool for Foss (along with 15 foot high mike stand for the Big F). The backdrop of the church was, by contrast, quite magnificent, with high vaulted ceilings, tall stained glass arched windows and LOTS of wood and stone:

St Mary's Church, Haddington - Fishbowl for the evening!

I don't think the Friday gig was sold out and despite the size of the space above our heads (see above!), it felt quite intimate, perhaps on account of it actually being quite a narrow space (although long!). Fish opened the show with an unaccompanied version of Chocolate Frogs ("for a heid full of chocolate frogs what can you give to me?"). Now, I can't and won't give a track-by-track listing of the whole show - look elsewhere for that - I tend to live and enjoy live gigs in the moment and quite often can't remember afterwards exactly what I've heard song by song. In fact, I never intended to do so anyway, as the tour continues and I don't see why I should spoil all the surprises for folk still to see the show. But - impressions of the gig - Fish was clearly delighted to be back live in front of a home crowd and revelling in the special stripped-down approach. Some of the material, the other two F's were clearly happy with but Fish joked about some of the older material and how nervous it made them... Indeed, some of the tracks were so old that it is clear that Channel 4's Time Team must have been drafted in to help recover them.  I assume this to be the case as there were so many bald heads and big beards in the crowd that it was clearly a Time Team night-out! Anyway, it won't spoil the tour too much to share a site-specific gag from Fish - he was actually married in this church in the late 1980's and recounted standing at the front with his two Best Men, a few feet from where he was performing, waiting for his German bride to arrive, slightly worse for wear from brandy in the hip flask, terrified by the thought of all the marzipan from all the weddings that had taken place in the church, imagining that it would fill the whole church. More on marzipan later...

Another poor picture from me but I love the effect - my phone camera couldn't cope with the bright stage lights reflecting off light coloured clothing and skin and it makes the three F's shine like inverse silhouettes - weird but really rather nice!

So, there were old Marillion tracks (as Fish mentioned them on his Facebook page, I'm not giving spoilers by saying that they played "Jigsaw" and "Punch and Judy" - fantastic versions) and a catalogue of solo career tracks, right up to date with stuff from 13th Star. Fish, as ever, wore his heart a-sleeve, 'fessing up to having been given the curse of being rubbish at relationships, balanced Yin for Yang, by the gift of being able to write about them. He also is still clearly interested in the story and fate of young working class Scottish lads who end up in the British Army, sent off to hellhole conflicts around the world and then just dumped back here to pick up the pieces afterwards - and there are numbers in this set that reflect that concern. I still like his open, confessional style on stage, and that, with his taking a seat down at our level on the front of the stage (because he was knackered and the other two had seats) created a great intimate feel for the audience, certainly those at the front:



Sorry abut the poor quality pic - my phone camera isn't the best!
Fish, Professor of Angst-Filled Bravado at the University of The Broken Heart takes a seat and has a chat!

So, I only want to report a couple more song-related things from the gig. At the Friday gig, we were treated to an extra song - at one point, Frank played the first few chords of Incommunicado, then stopped, and Fish asked him if he wanted to play it, as they had the time. Frank muttered no, let's do it tomorrow night. But that was no use to me - I wasn't going to be there, so I shouted "Do it now!" and they did! And it was yet another example of a song that shouldn't work without a rythmn section, but working so well as a stripped-down acoustic version. These three guys looked to be having so much fun on stage, even with the edgy worries about nailing some of the older numbers correctly, and a bit of good-natured ribbing about hardly-noticed wee errors in those! And on the subject of older numbers ... they played IT - yes, the one Fish never does live and that people always shout for at gigs! Well, Frank started playing the intro to "Grendel" (Marillion's much beloved (by the fans) 20-minute take on the Beowulf story but from the monster's perspective), following the inevitable shouts from the crowd. Fish said, "Do you want to do it?" and Frank was off, into the guitar intro, with Fish on the first verse and they continued, oh, for a whole minute. I called it the "One-Minute Version" but we could call it the 5% version too! A perhaps never-to-be repeated live experience? It only means something to fans... and you had to be there, but still...

And to recount the sum total of Fish's swearing for the night - it was ... none - he was a good boy and didn't swear (at all!) in church! And so, on the subject of marzipan...

Fish recalled, during Friday night's gig, his wedding day thought that all the marzipan from all the weddings that had taken place in the church might fill the whole church. I thought that deserved more attention so... I've done some calculations. Stick with me ("Listen to me. Just hear me out. If I could have your attention?"). We need to know: volume of marzipan per wedding cake and hence per wedding; number of weddings per year; how long weddings have been held (i.e. number of years = age of church), and the volume of the church.  I've had to make some assumptions... I assumed that marzipan is sold in packs that are 15x10x10 cm (0.15x0.10x0.10 metres) in size, and that 10 packs are used for the average wedding cake. That means that the volume of marzipan per wedding cake and hence per wedding is 10x(0.15x0.10x0.10) = 0.015 cubic metres of marzipan per wedding.  I've assumed that there are 400 weddings a year, which seems high but is only 8 per week in East Lothian's biggest church. Here's the fun bit - Google Brothers Inc. reveals that construction of St Mary's Church began in 1380 so, assuming people started being wed there from that date (in anticipation that it would be finished one day in the future, as indeed it was), that means there have been weddings for 630 years!

So, we have a total volume of marzipan over the lifetime of the church, equal to:

Volume of Marzipan per wedding x Number of Weddings per year x Number of years =

(0.015x400x630) or a total volume of 2835 cubic metres of marzipan.  So, to see if that would fill the church (it does sound like a lot of marzipan, doesn't it?), we need to know the volume of the church. Where to find that? Luckily, being a popular tourist location, there is lots of information on the church to be found at the excellent Google Brothers Inc (other infromation providers are available). The church is 63 metres long and 35 metres wide, but alas, no information is provided on the height (volume of the church, being roughly right-angled at the corners - it is 630 years old after all - is length x width x height). But I was there on Friday, and I would estimate that the average height might be 8 metres. the total volume would therefore be 63 x 35 x 8 = 17640 cubic metres.

Oh... but that's a lot more than the estimated volume of marzipan. In fact, we can calculate the depth of marzipan by dividing the volume of marzipan by the floor area of the church (because depth = (volume/(length x width)). So, that would be 2835/(63 x 35) = almost 1.29 metres. So, a paltry depth of marzipan that would barely reach Fish's waist (he is quite tall).  What a shame! But ... wait one minute - all may not be lost!

When did you ever go to a wedding and see the marzipan in blocks. At the wedding, it is ALWAYS already on the cake! So, I think we can have another go at this, assuming that all wedding cakes have three tiers (they do, don't they?). I reckon the following dimensions are more than reasonable for the three tiers of wedding cakes: upper - 20x20x10 cm; middle - 30x30x20 cm; lower - 40x40x30 cm. Yes, that would be a great wedding cake. Now, instead of the volume of marzipan (we can still assume 10 packs are used,  but it doesn't matter now), we have a volume of (0.2x0.2x0.2)+(0.3x0.3x0.2)+(0.4x0.4x0.3) = 0.07 cubic metres. The wedding cakes are effectively marzipan boxes filled with cake and we need to know the total volume of marzipan boxes. That means our new calculation would be:

Volume of Marzipanned cake per wedding x Number of Weddings per year x Number of years = (0.07x400x630) = 17640 cubic metres which is equal to the volume of the church - fantastic! So, Fish, the church would be marzipan filled SO LONG AS IT WAS ON THE WEDDING CAKES (and assuming my very reasonable assumptions are correct...)

Interestingly (if you are a bit sad), this figure was calculated to 2010 so, when Fish was standing at the altar in the late 1980's awaiting his bride, there was in fact a small gap somewhere at the top of the metaphorical marzipan-filled church awaiting the next 20 years (approximately) worth of marzipanned cakes.


PS If you thought that a headful of chocolate frogs was bad (see above), I found this while looking into marzipan: marzipan frogs. Help!

 

Battle of Britain Day, 15th September 2010

15th September, while I was away on holiday so couldn't post this at the time, is designated as Battle of Britain Day in the UK, in memory of all the brave people who fought (and in many cases, died) to keep Britain free, particularly at the height of the aerial battle for Britain in August and September 1940. A Battle of Britain memorial was installed on the London embankment in 2005, and I saw it for the first time last year. It shows the true horror of the blitz, representing the men, women and children involved on the ground, and the men of both sides who battled it out in the air above southern Britain. Here are a couple of the pictures I took when I visited it for the first time earlier this summer.

My little brother, CHAMPION prize-winning amateur film maker, has made a new short film about the RAF Spitfire squadron that was stationed at Drem in East Lothian, near where we grew up. A long way from the London blitz, no denying, but this squadron was heavily involved in defending Britain in 1940, and claims to have been the first squadron to be engaged in aerial combat action during world war 2.

My brother's fantastic wee film can be seen from his blog here, where he has embedded his Youtube film, and where you can read his background to the film. You can also just watch the film below (although I recommend that you watch it through the blog, so you can read the supporting story):

Everything's golden...

Having posted about the marine environment of East Lothian yesterday, I feel compelled to let you see this lovely little film made by my brother about what was happening on land! I should add congratulations to my brother for his recent prize at the Innerleithen mountain bike film festival (just so you know he is a serious film maker!). Lovely film, lovely music, lovely time of year, lovely county...

Great gannet grandstanding...

More dodging of my "timetabled" Ladybird book "seasons"  blog posts to tell you about a spectacular nature experience I had today, one described by no lesser personage than one of my own nature heroes, Sir David Attenborough, as “one of the Twelve Wildlife Wonders of the World”.

The Bass Rock is the largest single island gannet colony in the world, with over 150,000 gannets. The island effectively turns white between February and October once the gannets return from offshore where they over-winter. The latin name of the gannet, Britain's largest resident seabird, was formerly Sula bassana, now changed by bird taxonomists to Morrone bassana, and comes from the Bass Rock - the species was named after its most impressive population centre!

The Bass Rock from the west - the white colour is a mixture of thousands upon thousands of gannets and their droppings - guano!

I grew up in East Lothian and went to secondary school in North Berwick, the nearby harbour town and so probably saw the Bass rock nearly every week day of the year, barring holidays. But you know how it is, when you never actually manage to get around to visiting the local sights that all the tourists and all your visitors want to go to. So it was with me and the Bass rock. I lived in East Lothian until I went away to University and I have never moved back. Every summer for the last few (20?) years, I've said I must get out to the Bass. But I never managed to take the boat trip round the island to see the gannets, the seals and the coastal scenery. Until today, that is.

Now you have to understand that most of that time, there was only one boat trip around the Bass, on the Sula II, originally run by Fred Marr, and now by his son Chris and daughter Pat. You can find out more about this here, along with information on their excellent and valuable gannet rescue work here. There are more boat trips around now, and also the Scottish Seabird Centre near the harbour which allows a different perspective on the Bass Rock, with remote cameras, etc., but it seemed to me that the best way to visit the Bass Rock would be with the Marrs on Sula II, with their fantastic local knowledge - eleven generations of the Marr family have worked out of North Berwick harbour. I don't think you can substitute for that kind of experience and inheritance. So when I heard earlier this year that this might be the last season that the Sula II would be running (Chris is retiring), I was determined to make a trip after all these years.

And so I took the day off work, in anticipation of the current high pressure lasting another day or two, and went, via breakfast at my parents along the coast, to North Berwick. As a hopeless nostalgic sentimentalist, I always find it quite emotional when I manage to spend a day around North Berwick, which due to schooling, is probably in third place in the list of places in which I have spent the most days of my life. It is such a beautiful little coastal town and, to my eyes, seems even more bustling and well-to-do than it ever did. No gap sites on the high street here, despite the credit crunch and global financial meltdown, though no doubt a few former Edinburgh bankers live there - NB is a very "des-res" place for people looking to move out of Edinburgh (it probably always was). Many of the shops I knew as a school child have gone, replaced by cafes and pretty little boutiques selling nice things and coastal lifestyle stuff!

 Anyway, I joined the mid-day sailing of the Sula II today (times vary daily due to tides and weather conditions), skippered by Chris Marr, with other family members helping with the crewing.

Sailing conditions and weather were perfect. I couldn't have asked for (or expected) better.

We motored out to the Bass Rock where it looked a bit like this on the way out...

The sky around the Bass rock is a seething mass of tens of thousands of gannets, gulls and occasional shags or cormorants. And it is noisy!

And every available square inch of space on land seems to be occupied or fought over:

At one point, we went in close enough to take these:

Here's the old foghorn I remember hearing as a child when the typical Scottish East Coast summer "haar" (sea fog) rolled in (to spoil our precious school summer holidays) - now decommissioned as a foghorn (it is all electronics and satnav systems now) but still obviously popular with the birds!

A final image from the Bass, to show the steeps cliffs that are the result of the weathering and glacial scraping away of the softer rocks around this plug of basalt, the origin of the Bass Rock being a former volcanic eruption:

We sailed back via another smaller island, Craigleith, which has its own seabird and conservation story to tell, but that's for another day. I'm immensely happy after all this time to have made that trip, in that boat, with those people, on this fabulous day, to have seen these sights, those birds and views. If you want to do it, then go and do it before the end of September. The contact details are on the Sula II website.  I took my darling O home a wee box of "Berwick Cockles" ("A crumbly soft red striped traditional boiled sweet") as a "Gift from North Berwick", but I can't help but feel that I was given the greater gift today!

Some of Pat Macaulay's rescued gannet chicks, being fed and strengthened before being returned to sea.