Back To Work
So, I go away for a fortnight's holiday and return to discover the entire Â鶹Éç has been again. I wasn't sure whether I'd still have a desk to sit at when I turned up for work this morning, but I managed to bluff my way past security and bumped into Karen Dunbar in the corridor outside studio G10. She's been presenting the mid-morning programme during July and says she's just getting into the swing of it and this is her last week.
I'd spent the weekend in Inverness finalising plans for my move north next month and touring the building site that will be our new home in December. That was fun. We got to wear hard hats and walk up planks of wood into the shell of what will be a neighbour's house. All going well we should have great views across the city and as far as the Kessock Bridge and the Black Isle. Meanwhile we'll be staying in a house we've rented on the outskirts of town. It's unfurnished at the moment so we made do with airbeds this weekend. I don't know if you've ever tried to sleep on one of those...it's like balancing on a blancmange.
It was a busy weekend in Inverness, what with the Highland Games in full swing. Not that we went to the games. Well, if you've seen one caber being tossed... Instead we parked by the River Ness and listened to Vic & Bryan's Big Scottish Adventure live from Anstruther. This week they were joined on the road by our other dynamic duo, Colin & Justin and, by all accounts, shook hands with just about everyone in the town.
Meanwhile, back in Glasgow today, I attend the monthly meeting of our Radio Drama team and discuss the new plays being produced for Radio 4, Radio 3 and Â鶹Éç 7. The range of output is impressive and our team seems to have developed a strong reputation for adapting detective stories - Sherlock Homes, Rebus and the The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. It's my aspiration to have more drama on Radio Scotland and we're building that in to our plans for the next year or two.
Last thing this afternoon is a meeting with the Editor of Good Morning Scotland, Stewart Easton and our trails producer Ken Lindsay to discuss the promotion of GMS next month. We're changing the line-up of presenters and it seems like a good opportunity to give the programme a bit more profile on the station. One of the difficulties of trying to "sell" a news programme, however, is that you can't trail the specifics of the content - not unless you have a crystal ball.
So listen out next week to hear what we came up with.
