LOG ENTRY 005

From a boy on Discovery...

to a man trying to build A Brand New World.

People keep asking me..."Why Dundee?" It's a fair question. After all, I've spent most of my working life travelling. I've worked with artists all over the world. I've lived in different places. Owned venues. Managed tours. Spent more nights in hotels than I care to remember. So why finish up here?

The truth is...I don't think I chose Dundee. I think Dundee had been quietly waiting for me all along. That probably sounds a bit odd. Bear with me. Let's go back nearly fifty years.

In 1977, I was a Scout. It was the Queen's Silver Jubilee year, and one of the highlights was spending time aboard RRS Discovery while she was moored on the River Thames. To me, she was just an incredible old ship. I climbed the decks. Imagined what it must have been like sailing into the unknown. Wondered what those explorers were thinking as they left everything familiar behind. At that age, I had no idea that one day Discovery would end up in Dundee. Even more incredibly...I had no idea that one day...So would I.

Life carried on. School became work. Work became music. Music became forty years of touring the world. The little Scout on Discovery memories disappeared somewhere along the way.

Or so I thought.

Life started leaving little breadcrumbs. First, there was Leaving Home. Back in the 1980s, I was in a band called December Rose, which created a concept album about humanity leaving Earth to find a better future. We imagined a giant galleon-shaped spaceship carrying refugees across the stars to a place called...Terra Nueva.

At the time, it was simply a name that felt right. A new land. A new beginning. A brand new world. Years later, I moved to Dundee. I walked down to the waterfront. And there she was. Discovery. Sitting proudly in her dry dock, right beside the V&A Museum. I just stood there for a while. The little Scout. The old explorer's ship. The city where she finally came home.And somehow...I felt like I had come home, too.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, but RRS Discovery had a sister ship called - guess what, Terra Nova, which was also built in Dundee! Suddenly another breadcrumb appeared. Or maybe I was simply starting to notice them.

Around Dundee, I kept coming across the name. Terra Nova. On buildings. On businesses. In conversations. I wasn't looking for it. It just seemed to keep finding me. Now, I'm a practical person. I don't spend my life looking for signs from the universe. Most things have perfectly sensible explanations. But every now and then...Life leaves you scratching your head. Was it a coincidence?

Probably.

Was it enough to make me stop and smile?

Absolutely.

Because by then, I wasn't seeing isolated moments anymore. I was seeing a lifetime of little breadcrumbs that somehow all seemed to point in the same direction. It made me smile. Because life has a funny way of joining dots you never even realised existed.

Then came CoSTAR. Abertay University. The gaming community. People who didn't ask, "Why would you want to do that?" They asked, "How can we help?" That was different. Very different. For the first time in a long time, I felt surrounded by people who still believed impossible ideas were worth talking about.

That matters. More than most people realise.

Then...

Something else happened that I still struggle to explain. I'm not asking anyone else to believe it. I'm simply telling you what happened. One morning, while I was wrestling with whether Dundee was really where I was supposed to be, something happened involving a rainbow... and a unicorn. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it wasn't. Either way...It made me stop. It made me smile. And for the first time in a very long time...I felt completely at peace with where I was. I'll tell you that story in the next Journal.

Trust me...

You couldn't make it up. Looking back now...I realise Dundee isn't important because it's where Terra Nueva is being created. It's important because it's where I finally stopped looking for somewhere else to be. For someone who has spent a lifetime living out of suitcases. That's quite a feeling.

Anyway...The kettle's just boiled. The coffee's calling. And tomorrow is another day!

The journey continues... 🌍

Next Log:The Rainbow, the Unicorn...

Stu