A COLLEAGUE with a better grasp of arithmetic than me (but then, most folks have) pointed out after the September ‘issue’ went on-line that it was in fact the 50th monthly edition of the journal. That seems cause for modest if belated celebration, and is an appropriate launch pad for further development of Northings and the website that we will be cooking up in the coming months.

ORGANISING so much as a barbecue, far less a major outdoor event in Scotland is always taking a hostage to fortune, but the weather has proved particularly uncooperative in this wettest and coldest of alleged summers.

EDEN COURT THEATRE found itself much in the news in July, albeit without actually doing anything. A banner front-page headline in the Press & Journal suggesting that the theatre would miss all of Highland 2007 proved to have nothing concrete to add to the current understanding of the situation, which is that the theatre is still scheduled – but not certain – to re-open sometime in the final third of the year.

HALFWAY THROUGH Highland 2007, and the reception has been – perhaps inevitably – rather mixed. There are plenty of events, but also a feeling that much of it is not all that relevant to the stated aims of promoting Highland culture, and taking it to the rest of Scotland and beyond.

LAST MONTH saw the first of the summer’s big Highlands & Islands music festivals in Skye, and they keep on coming as we move into June. The goNORTH event in Inverness is followed in short order by an expanded Rockness at Dores, and the first running of The Outsider festival at Rothiemurchus, just outside Aviemore. Both events have plenty of star names to offer, and are sure to attract a lot of visitors to the area.

THERE IS no doubt that the festival season hits with a vengeance this month.

FOLLOWING the sad news of her death from cancer in her native USA, Robert Livingston has paid tribute to Evi Westmore, the go-ahead Public Art Project Co-ordinator for Inverness.

NOT A great deal to report so far on the Highland 2007 front. After the initial splash of the launch in Inverness and the opening of the Fonn ‘s Duthchas exhibition, things have quietened down.

THE SIGHS of relief when a fortunate weather window allowed the Monster Street party that launched Highland 2007 in Inverness to go ahead pretty much as planned must have come close to rivalling the high winds which threatened the event on the night.

THE ARRIVAL of 2007 heralds the start of the much-discussed and long-awaited Year of Highland Culture, set to launch officially with a Monster Street Party in Inverness on 12 January (and let’s all fervently hope that Unique Events have more luck with the weather than they did in Edinburgh with their Hogmanay celebrations)