Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

As tents are packed away, discarded or recycled, and with it the secrets they keep, mud-dried festival-goers should now be rolling out of Glastonbury and headed in a vague direction of home.   I cannot say that I wish I had been there because camping turns my stomach, but I can say that with Glasto fresh in the airwaves, I gorged myself on music via Youtube for most of the weekend.   Some discoveries and rediscoveries I’d like to share. Iron and Wine – Upwards Over the Mountain.               http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qQud0kRpOQ If it’s possible, Samuel Beam aka Iron and Wine has a voice that’s as delicate as the late Elliott Smith’s.   It barely rises above a whisper, but like any great voice, it speaks volumes, as evidenced in Upwards Over the Mountain.   The Trapeze Swinger was one of my favourite tracks I was introduced to last year and this is another considerable discovery.  ...

My old mam's a dustgirl, She wears a dustgirl’s hat, The dustmen did dislike this, And all claimed in court that the fatal accident was caused by the dustcart’s faulty brake pedal.

Having wandered around the Scottish National Gallery's gift shop for upwards of thirty minutes, I suddenly noticed the time. What was I thinking? I’d managed to under estimate the strength of the treacle forming on its hands. To make amends, I rushed back and recommenced an exceedingly casual stroll around the gift shop. Time was chugging to a standstill. I spent a further twenty-five minutes treading a similar, yet even slower path around the shop than I had done before. I was waiting for part of the gallery that contained Sir Henry Raeburn’s The Skating Minister to open. It stands as one of Scotland’s most iconic paintings and, by way of an English to Scottish dialect translation site, I'll be buggered if ah come aw th' way tae Scootlund jist tae miss it! It was the day of the Royal Wedding. People were going bonkers over it. I mean really bonkers. A real British sort of bonkers, if there is any other kind. The scale of Royal Wedding hysteria fell somewhere between the ...