This week I have learned not to be quite so critical of talking heads on TV music programmes who talk rubbish (no names), as I had the experience of finding out for myself just how easy it is. I was in Edinburgh on Tuesday to record some conversation with Suzy Klein for a forthcoming BBC4 series on British music in the 18th century, next door to Bute House in Charlotte Square. We’d had a good chat through the topics to cover, some of which I was confident to ramble about and others on which I was perhaps on shakier ground. The thing is, when there’s a camera pointing in your face, and lights on you, and you get asked a question, you go into ‘performance’ mode as though you’re on stage: shrugging and mumbling don’t really cut it, so you end up manufacturing apparently eloquent opinion on the spot, with a sense of niggling doubt about whether what you’ve just said bears any relation to anything, other than just being the first thing you could think of. So it will be very interesting to hear what makes into the edit, and I will be far less ready to slag off people who talk shite on telly. The ceiling of the room we were in was pretty spectacular though …

Last weekend Roy & Aileen O’Neil, Allan Wright and I were clambering around Sandy Edmonstone’s organ-building workshop retrieving a variety of amazing instruments as he clears it out. I’m now the proud owner of a five-and-a-half octave square piano by the Scots maker to the royal family, William Stodart …

… and we also rescued an immaculate Mason & Hamlin reed organ complete with canopy, and a rather more derelict 1790s Shudi Broadwood harpsichord which at some point early in the 19th century had been converted into a piano, and even has a rabbit’s foot sustaining pedal with separate left and right sides (if anyone has room to look after this treasure, please let me know). Here it is dangling from a rope as we lowered it with the help of Sandy’s block and tackle from the rafters.

And here is Roy gazing in awe at Sandy’s original No.10 Meccano set.

For the last couple of weeks it’s been enormous fun to spend time with Errollyn Wallen, who’s been resident in the university’s School of Culture and Creative Arts. Last night we ended up in the Glasgow Curry Shop with none other than intonation guru Ross Duffin. Ross’s thesis that the 18th century musician conceptualised tuning around 6th-comma meantone makes huge amounts of sense to me, and he allowed me a fanboy moment by signing my copy of his most famous book: the last time I’d seen him was at Ronn MacFarlane’s birthday party in Cleveland 12 years ago.