What I think Inverness needs, part 1

Apologies for the lack of update lately.  I’ve been busy – working, with trips to Aberdeen and Edinburgh, plus a weekend at Nicole’s.  She says hi.  Note to self: blog more often.

I love Inverness, as I am sure I’ve mentioned before.  It’s a great place to live, work and relax – a neat, attractive and compact city with more or less everything you need or want from a city, without too many extremes of the negative sides of city life like crime, congestion and noise, and of course with easy access to some of the most beautiful scenery in the world that lies on its doorstep.

However, it’s certainly not perfect, and because of a number of factors – its rapid development and increasing profile, its distance from the centre of power in Scotland, and its importance to the highlands and wider Scottish tourist industry – there are many things that you hear people suggesting it urgently needs.

A Sainsburys or Asda, or just any competition to Tesco.  An end to the seemingly endless streetscaping.  Demolition of ugly city centre buildings such as those on either side of Bridge Street or the Ramada Jarvis hotel.  The completion of the bypass.  Opening up the castle to more than just those in handcuffs.

Having wandered plenty times around Inverness camera in hand or couchsurfers in tow, and having had a number of conversations with folk on the subject of the city, I’ve had a few ideas emerge in my somewhat cluttered and easily-bored brain.  And so I’d like to share some of my own thoughts about what I think Inverness needs, over the course of an as yet indeterminate number of blog posts.  I’m not touching on the examples above – they’re “givens”, and have been covered, advocated and campaigned for on numerous occasions over a long period of time.

Instead, I’ll touch on a few more interesting and unusual suggestions I have, though still quite serious.

The first idea was inspired by a glossy brochure that popped through my letterbox a few weeks ago from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, introducing and raising the profile of the proposed new Inverness Campus.  This is the proposed new hub for UHI and Inverness College (among others) and is planned for just to the east of the city, a rapidly expanding area of residential and commercial development known as the A96 Corridor (see map below).

View Larger Map

The campus (something else that can be added to the list of “givens”) isn’t what I want to write about, though.  Its proposed location is Beechwood, in the jaw between the railway line to Perth and the A9.  And just over the railway line from Beechwood is Inverness Retail and Business Park, home to numerous shopping outlets, the Vue cinema and several big offices.

A perfect location for a railway station.

In fact, it’s crying out for one – the retail and business park alone is a strong case for a railway station but with the campus being just across the line from it, the case is surely unavoidable and it’s verging on shocking that there’s no mention of it in the campus website.

Imagine being able to hop on a quick train to get out to the campus, to work, to Tesco, or to the cinema without having to take the highly unreliable and not-running-very-late-at-night bus or endure a noisy walk along a busy and unattractive road.  Or of course to be able to reach that part of the city from stations to the south, such as Aviemore or Carrbridge, without having to go into the city centre and double back by another means.

A major way to attract potential new students from the south could be to point out that it’s a direct train from Glasgow or Edinburgh to the very doorstep of the campus.  And with a railway station would surely come a footbridge, allowing for good flow of pedestrian traffic between the retail and business park and the campus, to the benefit of both.

And if you think about it, further along that line lie the commutervilles of Balloch, Smithton and Culloden.  You could almost reach out and touch them as you go by on the train (were it not for the fact that you’re travelling at high speed, it would be highly dangerous and illegal, and there’s a window in the way).  Why are there not also rail stops there?  They would cut down on traffic, make those otherwise bland and serviceless communities more accessible and attractive, and make “greater Inverness” (you heard that phrase here first) more of a coherent and networked conurbation.

A few weeks ago I was sitting at Inverness airport about to fly to Orkney, and a man with a clipboard approached me, explaining he was a marketing researcher for the airport and asking if he could ask a few questions.  Our very interesting conversation quickly turned to the idea of a rail link for the airport – this is another area near Inverness which is predicted to boom, with an emerging airport business park and plans for new towns such as at Tornagrain, all right along to the Aberdeen rail line.  Rail stops there have been a matter of some discussion, I believe, but have so far come to nothing.  So far.

Now if you’re really clever, ambitious and joined-up in your thinking (yes, I am eternally optimistic about the people in whose hands Inverness rests), why not have a branch running off the Perth line (somewhere after Balloch) that loops round via the likes of Croy and meets up with those new stops on the Aberdeen line?  You’d then have a circular line linking Inverness city centre with all the key suburbs, the airport, the campus, and the other proposed major development areas in the A96 corridor.

If you want to attract people, businesses and money to an area, you have to prove that there is the infrastructure to support it.  One of the great things about the likes of Glasgow is its excellent suburban rail network.  Building good public transport to meet a need only after things have reached capacity and start to slow should not be an option – people should be attracted to the area knowing there is a fully integrated suburban rail network with meaningful stops and services.  And with much of the line already there to the east of Inverness, it’s not going to be as massive a cost as it might be.

So there you go.  An eastern rail loop in Inverness.  The first thing I think Inverness needs.

The second thing I think Inverness needs is (even if I do say so myself) an absolute cracker of an idea.  But it will have to wait for another blog post.  It’s late at night, and – talking of cities that need major development – I’m off to Dundee tomorrow for work until the end of the week.  Wish me luck.

And wave if you see me.  I’ll be the one trying to reach out and touch Culloden as I go by on the train.

All sorts of everything…

I’ve been getting my fingers mucky this evening, as part of a raking team at church doing over the garden.  It’s a rare week of (mostly) no travels, so I felt it would be nice to help out.

The evening reminded me of two things: firstly what a wonderful community Hilton Church is, and secondly how much I hate anything to do with gardening.

And now for some music.

Justin’s recent post about In Rainbows reminded me that I had yet to get round to buying Radiohead’s latest offering, and so I did so the other evening via iTunes – for considerably more than the £0.00 I could have paid if I’d remembered to buy it when it came out.  It’s good, but I am not sure I would rave about it quite yet as Justin has done  – I’m only a couple of listens in, and since Radiohead went all weird they’ve been difficult to instantly like.  Which is no bad thing, but it’s just a bit too early for me to comment until I listen a bit more.  The other “weird” albums have grown on me, though, so I am sure In Rainbows will do so similarly.

I also bought the new Royksopp album (excellent – lively, catchy, quirky, but a bit too much voice for my liking), and the new Jon Hopkins album “Insides” (thanks to Niall’s recommendation from darkest Azerbaijan).  Good album, some sublime sounds as usual, but a couple of unnecessarily angry tracks and one that shamelessly reminds you of his recent Coldplay collaboration.  Niall says the album “goes surprisingly well on a rig, when the loud flaring has stopped and the rig has become (relatively) quiet again”.  I will just have to take his word on that one.

Just to continue the theme, I also bought the new Kyte EP, Lights Outside Here, a few weeks ago.  Now this I can extensively rave about.  Soft, gentle, soothing but energetic electro-pop that really relaxes and cheers at the same time, and I can’t believe Kyte are so unheard of.

(Okay, that wasn’t much of an extensive rave.  It is only an EP, though, not a full-length album.)

Kyte’s Lights Outside Here has been fiercely mud-wrestling with Malcolm Middleton’s latest album Sleight of Heart for supremacy on my iPod in recent weeks.  The more I listen to Malcolm Middleton, the more I think he’s a latter-day Bob Dylan – compelling and thoughtful music, gorgeous lyrics, a melancholic feel, and an unashamedly unimpressive voice.  Like his previous album Into The Woods, Sleight of Heart is full of beautiful ballads, dark humour, and a canny knack for seeing the pessimistic in everything.  Penultimate track Love Comes in Waves is the hauntingly poetic highlight.

What else do I need to tell you?  Ah yes, this article on BBC News has pointed me to this jaw-dropping video of a stunt cyclist in Edinburgh.  Well worth a peek.

There’s been progress on the wedding-planning front too, but that’s not exclusively my news, so I’ll perhaps not blog about it right now.  Where that sort of dilemma stands this blog after I am married, I have no idea and will have to think about it.  I’ll not be giving it up, though, that’s for sure (my blog, I mean, not getting married or thinking – not that I’ll be giving them up either. Anyway, moving on…).

I’ve also been doing lots of writing, but more about that soon.

And finally, I’ve got round to uploading some more photos to Flickr.  I went out a few nights ago to make the most of the beautiful weather and still night-time conditions, but never got round to uploading anything of what I took.  I’m quite pleased with the results.

Right, that’s quite enough from me.  How are you, my dear reader?

Firefly and Serenity

As exclusively revealed a few weeks ago, I have watched the DVDs of science fiction show Firefly and its follow-up film Serenity.  It’s been a few weeks since I got through them, and reckon I should write my thoughts thereon before they slip further from my mind.

In a nutshell, they are outstanding pieces of science fiction.  The series, cruelly cancelled by the TV company after just fourteen episodes, quickly gained a massive cult f0llowing (if a massive cult following is not an oxymoron – answers on a postcard).  The axing apparently led to huge fan pressure for further work and eventually the film was made to continue and arguably conclude the story.

The series revolves around a ship called Serenity, five hundred years into the future, where humankind has colonised far-flung planets, and a war by the unified authorities in the galaxy has brought the frontier planets under common control.  Serenity’s captain and first mate are survivors from the losing side, the “independents”, who live on the edge of the authority in more ways than one, and an oddball crew join them in a fight for wealth, adventure, and more often than not, mere survival.  The film Serenity, albeit on a bigger scale and budget, feels the same and continues with the same overall plot and characters.

It might sound like a lot of science fiction out there, and on one level it is: everything from Star Wars to Babylon 5 has looked at the idea of rebels, galactic alliances, and good versus evil.  However, a number of things make this very refreshing.  Firstly, the fact that this is deep space is not relevant – there are no aliens or robots, this is just humans at the frontier.  Replace spaceships with horses or boats, and deep space with plains or seas, and you have a western or pirate film, or a “survivalist” drama.  In that sense, it’s an utterly and refreshingly old-school adventure story.

Secondly, it doesn’t take itself seriously.  There are clever drops of humour, often very self-depracating, and cliches of so many genres are brilliantly sent up.  In one Firefly episode, for instance, the crew are discussing what to do with a mind-reader.  One dismisses the mind-reading as just science fiction.  His crewmate points out to him that they’re on a spaceship.  “So….!?” he replies.  Often when you least expect it, which is the best time to have it, the humour is a huge strength of the show and the film.

Thirdly, put simply, it’s just excellent on all counts.  The dialogue is brilliant.  The characters are compelling, and the biggest disappointment in the mere fourteen and one feature film is that while they’re all instantly likeable, we feel we’re only just beginning to get to know the characters when things stop.  The special effects are excellent, the feel of the show is a gritty frontier western feel, and the stories – while sometimes ridiculous – are great fun.

Amble around the internet and you’ll find a huge number of sites dedicated to the show and film, mourning their loss.  I’ll maybe write more if I find time to watch them all through again – which I’d love to do some time – but it’s just a sad, sad loss that Firefly was cancelled when it was.

The only good side of that is the show it was never allowed to jump the shark…

The end

I go back to work tomorrow, after two weeks’ very enjoyable holiday.

Today has been a quiet day of watching Lost episodes, tidying the flat, doing some (but not enough) writing, and taking some photos at dusk.

A nice end to my downtime, I think.

Back to work tomorrow, albeit only to a two-day week…

A visit to St Nic’s

Before catching our lunchtime train back north, Nicole – who had come to Nottingham with me – and I went to church on Sunday morning. There was a church not far from where we were staying, and so we decided to gatecrash their 9am service.  And very good it was too, so I have felt moved to write a wee report.

The church was St Nic’s, an evangelical Anglican church which – despite their tagline “Living on the edge with Jesus” – could not have been handier for the city centre.  A fairly ordinary and unassuming building from the outside, the interior was bright, spacious, modern and above all very welcoming.

As were the people – before the service two different people came to speak to us in our (very comfy) seats and gave us warm welcomes, asking who we were, where we were from, and – in one case – precisely what the difference between the Church of Scotland the Church of England was.  I can’t quite remember how I answered that one, but it might have been along the lines of “less bishops, duller sermons”.

The service itself, clocking in at just over an hour, was a Holy Communion (whatever that means – yes, there’s another difference), and the mostly older congregation of about 50 was led by the fully robed minister in a service that more or less entirely revolved around the liturgy.

Now I’m not a fan of the liturgy (you can tick off a further difference) – clergy study faith and the Bible for years, and you’d rather hope they could think up their own words.  But it was a novelty to have it done on the projector screen rather than in dog-eared books with pen ink scribblings on them, and the sermon and music were very good too.

On our way out, more folk spoke to us, including one who said goodbye and remembered our names from before the service.  We also chatted briefly to the very pleasant minister.  Although he’s probably called Rector, it being Church of England.

Overall, there was a lovely atmosphere to the place – loving, welcoming, and a great sense of community.  It was perhaps not a typical picture of St Nic’s however – the later morning service was the more family-orientated one, and the evening one more youth-friendly, and so perhaps things are different then, I obviously don’t know.

If you find yourself needing a church in Nottingham, then I could heartily recommend this one.

Victory!

Greetings from Newcastle, where I am availing myself of National Express’s wireless while on the train home from Nottingham to Inverness.

I was down for the annual Join Me bash, Good Good Friday, which was of course followed the next day by the titanic North v South football match.  And what a game it was – a nail-biting 10-9 victory to Team North.  Thrilling though it was, the hard-fought match was the usual insult to football, and it perhaps says something about the quality on show that all ten of our goals were scored by a guy recently out of hospital.

As for my own performance, I was inept, unfit and bumbling, with responsibility for at least a couple of the southern goals.  I voluntarily substituted myself as a result, a move which may well have helped seal our victory.  I’d love to blame my performance on a lack of fitness or match practice, but that’s the case every year, so why I was particularly bad this year I have no idea.

Perhaps it’s age…

Engaged

I’m engaged!

To be married, I mean.  Not in the toilet or on the phone.  And if it was that, you can be sure I wouldn’t blog about it.

Anyway.  Engagement.

To those of you who are regular readers but with whom I haven’t been in touch for a while, this probably will come as a bit of a surprise.  You might not even have known I was going out with anyone.

Many of my friends who I texted the other day to share the news certainly didn’t, and it shows how rubbish I am at keeping in touch with people that some of the responses included “Um… I presume she’s your girlfriend?” and “Congratulations.  Who is this?“

We’ve been going out for about six months now, but I didn’t blog about it because when it comes to such matters, I regard blogging the same way as getting tattoes.  A tattoo of a loved one’s name is a sure sign that you’ll break up the next day and be left with a permanent reminder of your double stupidity (though I do not base this claim on personal experience).  Plus, of course, work and family are not things I blog about anyway, for all sorts of hopefully obvious reasons.

But now we’re engaged, it’s something I can’t really not mention in my blog.  And she will no doubt feature in these hallowed pages now and then.  I proposed in Glen Affric on Monday (see photo).

More on all this some time soon, but in the meantime it goes without saying that we are dead chuffed and have quite a bit of planning to do.

Oh, her name’s Nicole and she lives on Deeside in Aberdeenshire.  She says hi.

New website

Regular readers will have been gripped in recent weeks at the non-stop soap opera regarding my website. If you have no interest in websites, publishing, and silly computer jargon, please feel free to glaze over about now.

The long and the short of it is that I’ve rebuilt it using Apple’s iWeb programme, which like all Apple things is at first infuriatingly unintuitive and then eventually – once you grasp its very un-PC logic – brilliantly simple.

Once I’d designed it I had a few major headaches with uploading it to my server, and the client I used (ClassicFTP) actually had a couple of annoying bugs in it. But after much screaming, pulling out of hair, accidentally deleting my entire site, assistance from the Apple forums and help from a friend or two, I am eventually there, and you can now see it in all its new-fangled and resplendent glory.

It’s a bit slick and minimalist, but I have always thought that the best websites are the ones that don’t take too much time, searching or bandwidth to tell you what you need. I am sure there is more I could do with the design, but that will wait until I can be bothered to understand iWeb a bit better.

Other than my new website, I’ve just been enjoying being on holiday. It’s good that the nice weather is here at last, and I have been out quite a bit enjoying it.

I’m in poor shape for Saturday’s massive football match, but that’s no different from past years…

Babies

I got a text this morning from a friend – who was due to give birth in a couple of months – saying that the baby arrived last night.  How dramatic!  And the poor wee thing – no doubt there would be huge health problems with a baby so early.  I texted back saying congratulations and wishing them all well.

Then I got a text back from her:

Haha, April Fool!

Bugger.  I hate being caught out by such things.

I was more prepared, however, when a completely different friend texted later in the day with a picture of an ultra-sound scan.  It was a convincing forgery – a very typical ultra-sound image of an unborn baby, and even with his wife’s name photoshopped in the wording at the top of the screen.

Hah!  I was all ready for what was obviously the joke du jour for this April Fools.  I texted him back, pouring scorn on his feeble attempt to trick me.  But…

Oops.   He texted back.  It seems he wasn’t joking.  Congratulations really were in order this time.

It’s so hard to know what to believe and what not to believe on April Fool’s Day…