When you're 16, things tend to sink in deep and stay there for life. It's hard for me to be objective about the music I obsessed over back then, for example: it hit me hard and left impacts like craters, Over time the dust and ash settles; now they're just part of the inner landscape, overgrown but always visible. And not just music. It's October 1989, and we're on a family holiday on Arran. I've a new, burgeoning obsession: mountains. Somewhere in the last couple of years I've shifted from being an often reluctant hanger-on trailing after my dad in soggy home-knit pullovers and hand-me-down plus fours, a sort of unspoken apprenticeship. Something has come to fruition, a tipping point has been reached. Maybe it's age, an accrual of confidence, a first secure foothold in the arts of map and compass, whatever - but now I want more than anything to get out there into the hills, alone or with others, it doesn't matter. Oh and there's this list of mou
