Of course there have always been some who need or choose to stand and be carried – the infirm, the heavily pregnant, the otherwise encumbered – and of course that’s partly the point of an escalator. But it used to be understood that they’d keep to the right, so that those seeking speed could do so in the left-hand lane.

Now most people step on, stop short, and settle themselves where they feel like over the thoroughfare, so that it stops being a thoroughfare. So that if you want to be an active escalator user, you have to be a bit pushy, act impatient and say ‘Excuse me’, and I just bet that this shift in behaviour overlaps with the onset of what’s now widely known as the obesity epidemic. It likewise ties in with the perniciously prevailing presumption that if a machine can take the place of some human task or activity, then by definition it should do: it must be doing it better, or be better that’s it’s doing it, whereas in fact all sorts of hard-to-quantify but crucial stuff tends to be lost in such substitutions. In the escalator context, it’s not only that such contrary slothfulness reflects and feeds our chronic de-habituation to physical exertion as part of everyday life, it’s also the way it signifies how insular social norms have become. At the risk of sounding 97 years old, I’m sure that consideration for others’ convenience used to be a much more integral, automatic factor in most people’s public behaviour, whereas now, all too often, it doesn’t seem to cross their minds.

Not to get too sourly sunk in ranting – though I do feel better for getting that off my chest – I was at a very fine gig last night, courtesy of the very wonderful Treacherous Orchestra: 13 of Scotland’s finest young male instru/mentalists, on their sixth night riding the rollercoaster of their first ever tour. It was great to hear some new material, as well as the old favourites, and the balance of balls and brains in their best numbers – besides the awesome massed firepower – is truly exceptional and thrilling. What they really have to focus on, though, is making the sounds that only they can make, of which there certainly seems to be no shortage – but it’s the points in tonight’s set where I found myself thinking, oh, this is like Capercaillie, or Shooglenifty, or Croft No. Five, or the Unusual Suspects, which represent the pitfalls they need to avoid. Those bases are covered, by the originals, and for anyone else they tend to represent a lapse towards the generic, or flabby, and there just ain’t no room for that round here right now.

If karma ever applied to Scottish weather, those hosts of poor shivering daffodils I passed en route would be heralding the best summer in years. Utter caprice being in fact the prevailing principle, we’ll wait and see as ever, keeping a weather eye open for special deals on Vitamin D supplements.

The solstices get much more attention, but these other two dates are no less crucial hinges of the year: from tomorrow, here in the northern hemisphere, the days will now be longer than the nights until September, making it officially – at last! – the start of spring. It’s another week till the clocks change, but after yesterday’s brief bout of equinoctial gales, it was so beautifully sunny and still today that when I cycled home across the Meadows, well after six, there were still loads of people sitting out on the grass, while the sky faded to pale apricot, which felt like a real promise of things to come. (Although apparently equinoctial gales are a bit of a folk myth, possibly traceable to 17^th-century seafarers extrapolating wrongly from hurricane seasons in the West Indies.)

Aptly enough there, I happened to look up and clock the Green Man overlooking my desk, hung on the side of a tall bookcase. He’s one of the hundred or so amongst the carvings at Rosslyn Chapel, bought in replica from the gift shop, a fat-cheeked, slant-eyed wee gadgie, about six inches across, face fully wreathed in leaves, from which two thick tendrils disappear into either corner of his toothy, half-grinning, half-snarling mouth. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m any kind of pagan or New Age believer - or any other kind, for that matter, simply an out-and-out atheist with a soft spot for the Green Man as an especially enduring and widely shared folk symbol. He’s basically an embodiment of the life force, I reckon, in all its wanton, doubled-edged, necessitous unpredictability, and feels to me an essentially positive presence – though certainly not someone to take for granted.

Also beside my desk is Some Kind of Certainty (Greentrax), the long-awaited solo album debut from singer/guitarist Ewan Robertson – Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2008, and a member of the excellent young Scottish band Breabach – which arrived in this morning’s post. Not had a chance to listen to it yet, but I’m anticipating a treat, and a quick peruse of the track listing bodes enticingly indeed. There are songs by the well-kent likes of Richard Thompson, Phil Ochs and James Grant, plus a couple of traditional gems, but perhaps most intriguing in prospect are two numbers from the brilliantly maverick Highland songwriting team of Nick Turner and Finlay Napier (aka Queen Anne’s Revenge), and another by the Skye-based trombonist and all-round musical godhead Rick Taylor.

The fact that the Scottish music scene continues to thrive and progress in such inspiring fashion has a lot to do with this readiness among musicians to hitch their wagons together, to believe and invest in what one another are doing: it’s one of the many things which makes that scene such a joyous place to be.

So, obviously, I’m new to this blogging malarkey – though I have spent 20 years writing for a living, and actually lost my online cherry (e-cherry?) when I wrote an event-based daily blog for three weeks earlier this year. But that was anonymous, a kind of chatty/gossip column-style commentary on said event, and when I’ve got my journalist hat on there’s the protection of professional objectivity (as far as that’s possible) as well as a very particular brief to write to. This all feels very naked. (Which wasn’t another shameless ploy – though it likely can’t hurt.)

As you might be gathering, I’m one of the world’s tardiest adopters of any new-fangled technology. I only recently got my fourth new mobile phone, ever. So it’s going to be as much of a learning curve to find my way around the technicalities of posting, categorising, archiving etc – reassuringly idiot-proof as they look – as it is to figure out what to write. I’m sure it’s all going to be a great adventure – for some reason I’m put in mind of The Phantom Tollbooth (and thus of its splendidly named creator, Norton Juster), especially the Dictionopolis bit. In a good way: it’s one of my all-time favourite books.

Anyway, here goes with the sharing thang, which I gather is part of the point: daffodil season always makes me happy. (I’ve just looked round and seen the bunch on the chest of drawers at my window, in absolutely perfect full bloom.) On sale across town for a quid or so a bunch for maybe another month – by which time the outdoor ones will be happening. Gorgeous, gladsome flowers, so totally redolent of spring. They don’t last long, of course, and once they’re wilting they smell really sickly – but for a quid or so it’s part of the pleasure to buy a bunch more in bud and watch them open up. I weeded and dug over our whole garden last Sunday. Not that it’s exactly big, just a wee lawn with three borders around it, but I did the lot in one stint, worked up a fine muck sweat for a couple of hours, followed around by a thrush and a robin hoping for worms, and it felt fantastic – especially for someone usually desk-bound, living at 56° north, after the coldest winter in 30 years.

Going back to mobile phones, here’s a great wee factoid to round off my maiden post. It comes from a book I read recently, Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth (Bloomsbury, 2005), which recounts how its author Andrew Smith tracked down and interviewed the then nine remaining astronauts who’d walked on the Moon. It’s a really interesting, thoughtful, thought-provoking and lovingly crafted read all round, but the particular snippet that’s pinged to mind is the fact that NASA Mission Control’s entire computing power for the 1969 landing – and we’re talking vast roomfuls of kit here – was equivalent to about four mobile phones, circa 2005. The lunar module’s entire computer payload amounted to 56k. Even when I began my journalistic career as the proud owner of an Amstrad, I had nearly ten times more than that.

Having just taken delivery of a new, albeit budget-priced laptop this past Monday (that being partly the spur to get blogging: every single smallest task had become a teeth-gritting toil with its geriatric predecessor),  only a week or so after the new phone, I’m even more than usually boggled by it all. But enjoying this new dimension so far. . .