(This one is going to be a work in progress while I’m progressing other works.)

Over roughly ten years mucking around with music, MC-ing, radio, print, a little light advocacy and jumping around selling merch for people I like, The BordererS have been a real constant.

They have a powerful gift of music and it just lights a little fire in my heart, soul, spleen and it spreads to the balls of my feet.

And in a short space of time, Jim Paterson and I have discussed some matters of no scant import.

(No scant importance? No Scant Imports are located in Glasgow and do wholesale homewares and fashions from the Netherlands and selected Scandinavian and Baltic countries.)

On Wednesday this week, we were chatting about religion in the context of our respective upbringings, the Phillips Hughes funeral and memorial services, and where we ourselves had gotten to, as middle-aged men o’ the world.

Bill: “Do you know which song of yours resonates with me the most right at this very moment right now, Jim?”

“Erm, is it, ‘Will You Love Me When I’m Fat, Bald and Ugly?‘”

Not quite, but well played. Bloody Scots! They’re ready with a zinger, as the PR man said to Colonel Sanders.

Ok, let’s throw Part I of this out to the wolves. Three to four parts (aka videos) to come.

I had a fairly hectic ‘there for one day only’ at Blue Mountains Music Festival this year. Read about some of it in this month’s Trad and Now magazine.

And on my 90 minutes off in the middle of a baking hot day, I jumped right in to be impromptu merch spruiker (a la Marcel Marceau) for the band.

Herewith video #1:

(It’s actually not chronologically the first from the day but see above for where Jim and I DID mention it and discuss it in dispatches! 😉 )

To be continued…

Right now. On Sunday morning at roughly 6:36am or at least it was when this video started loading up like a well boiled icicle* up a drain pipe like a rat on a greased pig.

* See, this is what you get when you try to mangle metaphors. I had to have five cracks at the word before realising that icycle does not have a ‘y’ in it. Y? It just doesn’t. They needed to save it for ‘bicicle’. Bycicle.

So, this was the first video I took that day. I do this a thousand times, at least once a day and twice on Sundays. Part of me says, sit down, shut up, eat your spinach and funnel web* gozleme and tap your feet in time to the music.

* fennel weed.

But then this little voice inside my head says, ‘At the third stroke, it will be 1.13pm precisely. BONG! BONG! BONG!*’

* Kids, drugs are bad, ‘mkay? Stay in school, stay away from the bongs. Three is just asking for trouble.

And then another voice inside my head says, ‘Jump right in’. I blame ‘The BordererS’ and that amazing album which you can see on this video as I point to pretty much every track. ‘Inspired!’ I was, I have been, I am and I will be. I used to have a whole Facebook page called ‘Inspired!’ with a very large dedication to that wonderful album.

But for now: