One of things I meant to do when I returned to Scotland four years ago was to look up an old Scottish friend that I'd last seen some twenty years ago in London. In truth I had a whole hatful of ambitions and intentions on my list, and rather to my own surprise and to utter amazement of my wife and daughter, I've gradually managed to tick them off over last few years. Alright, I know you can't wait to find out what was on this list, so I'll just run through some of them briefly. First of all, since I was no longer a full-time musician, having developed guitarists version of tennis elbow, I needed something else to fill my time, and only other thing I was good at (apart from snooker) was art. I had always painted and sketched, mostly landscapes, although I rarely sold anything.

I had an idea that there was a market for pet portraits if I could reach it, and and way to do that seemed to be via internet, so I bought a computer, digital camera, printer etc and hired a local company to design and run a website for me. After a while I realized that it was much cheaper to design your own site, so I thought I'd have a go - how hard could it be, right? Very hard, was answer, as anybody who has tried it will tell you, but after two years of HTML, jpg's, links, virus's, backache, eye strain and late nights I finally got hang of it, although as a result of being self-taught I find I'm quite knowledgeable about some aspects of web-building and appallingly ignorant about others.

Another project near to my heart was search for any survivors of Scottish side of my family - a side I had lost contact with as a child. This was one of reasons I'd gone on internet in first place, and yes, there were still Collins's living in Edinburgh area and Cowdenbeath, where I was born.

When I made trip down to Fife, I met my cousin June, who told me about my dad, who I never really knew, and about my grandad, who was a miner (as all men in area were before mining industry was destroyed by - but don't get me started). Grandad was known as Tiger Collins because of his red hair. My cousin also told me that I had a half-sister who had been looking for me for years, and was under impression that I had emigrated to Australia.

I had known that I had a sister but what I didn't know was that she lived just twenty miles from where I used to live in England. I now know there are Collins's across west to Glasgow and probably all way over into Ireland and down to Dublin in Cork, where all Collins's ultimately come from. I'm also connected to Donaldsons (my middle name). The Donaldsons or Clan Donald were Lords of Western Isles at time of Jacobite rebellion, but that's a story for another time.

Another idea that I had was to own a collie and after I lost my Patch I acquired a border collie cross called Oscar and we've just bought a rough collie as a companion for him. We call her Daisy May. There are a couple of items still on my list - I can't find a decent snooker club and there are no chess clubs within easy reach, but there is one idea that will never be realized. Lindsay Cooper, my old friend from London died year we moved up to Scotland.

I found this out recently when I finally got around to making a search on internet. When I knew him he was spitting image of 'Animal' from Hill Street Blues - remember little guy with dark hair and droopy moustache? - except he had broadest of Glaswegian accents. He played double bass and also cello. He played jazz but he also loved Bach.