I was planning a trip to the northwest of Scotland, close to the part of the Highlands where I’d grown up. I’d travel on public transport to locations from three favourite films. First stop: the lonely rail station at Corrour, as featured in Trainspotting – the highest mainline station in the United Kingdom, 410 metres above sea level. Then on to Morar, where Local Hero is partly filmed, on Camusdarach Beach. Finally, the Isle of Mull, star location in Powell and Pressburger’s 1945 filmic wonder I Know Where I’m Going!

Rather delightful.

I know, the ones without ads are mostly out on the long tail, but what matters is that anybody can podcast on the Net, just like anybody can publish there. RSS—really simple syndication—gives all of us scale. This is, as Kurt Vonnegut once said , a miracle on the order of loaves and fish. It’s foundational.

The Other Reasons Why Podcasting is Hot

🐻 Bears Repeating

Walked the Jaw – Greenside loop this morning. Small tortoiseshell & a few orange tips. Lots of birds singing. Cuckoos calling. Cuckoo flowers out & hawthorn quite green now. On the hill: stonechat, larks, a wheatear moving along the path in front. Meadow pipet, a reed bunting. A couple of ravens over the Greenside path.

I had left my camera’s SD card in the reader so missed a couple of opportunities.

Read: The Names by Florence Knapp ★★★★ 📚

She wonders again if she is doing this right. Any of it, all of it. If it's even the right thing for Gordon himself to be carrying on this tradition. Maybe consenting to live in the shadow of his father and his father's father is only perpetuating the likeness, increasing the weight of it for him. Perhaps calling their child something different would be a liberation. Not at first, but later.

Names change character & experience. Three versions of the same characters lives. The sliding doors moment comes when the name of a wee boy is chosen.