In all the time I've been walking and wandering around the Borders I've never found it easy to get access to some of the most attractive places. For example the rivers. There are good reasons for this which I'll discuss in due course when I come to investigate land ownership more generally. For now I'm interested in the kinds of locks, clasps, hasps, bolts and other mechanisms that landowners or tenant farmers use to keep animals in a field and in some cases, again to be examined later, to keep people out. Here are some pictures from a recent walk up the back roads, yonder and beyond. Most of these methods of securing gates are common to sheep fields where the farmer isn't too bothered about who comes and goes, as long as you close the gate after you. A bit of orange 'tow' goes a long way (pronounced tau in Aberdeenshire where I come from).

This is my Dowina Grand Auditorium steel strung acoustic guitar. I have it in open C or one of the many variants, tunings I found by looking into the music of Robbie Basho and others. I bought it from Richards Guitars in Stratford and it's one of the best purchases I've made.

I can't say if it's better than any of the other big name guitars but I've never played a better acoustic guitar. It has that balance which makes an acoustic so enjoyable to play and it suits my style of playing as I normally like to drive the guitar with complex right hand picking. The LR Baggs pickup is loud and clear. I can mix the internal mic and pickup from controls at the soundhole. The guitar police love to come up at gigs and tell me all about it, how best to use it and how they were thinking of buying one the same but went for a better model. Bless.

I'm told it was hand made in Slovakia by a Czech maker. The top is spruce, the back and sides Padauk. I like a wide enough neck to be able to 'work' the fingerboard and this one is perfect. I can't be sure but I like to think that the spruce tops aren't that different from the wood used to make all those high-end Italian violins. I do know that there was at one time a cottage industry of very good fiddle makers in Bohemia and Moravia. I feel confident that this guitar was made by someone who knows their trade.

There's only one tiny little thing that I'd have requested and that's to have bigger and brighter fret markers on the side of the neck (there are none on the fretboard). I just use little dots of white tippex to see where I'm going.

Here we go. After years of procrastination I've finally decided to talk about equipment. The reason it took me so long is because the stuff you read about on forums tends to turn my stomach - which guitar? (aka my guitar is better than yours), what strings?, why American gear is better than anything else. Not to mention guys called Brad with dodgy tats who shout at you from Youtube. So now it's my turn. Let's start with the best electric guitar in the world.

And it's a Yamaha. Yes, I don't have any problems with buying Japanese guitars. In fact if I had the money I'd get myself one of their amazing SA2000 hollow bodies and an LL16 twelve string acoustic just for good measure. I'd save myself a fortune by not buying Gibsons and I'd have better instruments.

This is a Revstar RS820CR, modelled on London 60's motorbike styles. I bought it second-hand in mint condition for less than £500. I used to teach guitar from a big guitar shop and I've tried just about every model of Les Paul and all the Les Paul derivatives. This is better than any of them, maybe with the possible exception of an Ibanez 'lawsuit' Les Paul that I'd dearly love to extract from a friend of mine but he's having none of it.

It's a heavy instrument which is good news for a solid body electric. The pickups sound very different from each other and the middle position is perfect. It handles low open tunings without any flopping around.

I'll be using it on my next electric album where I want to investigate tripped out country and the ecstasy of desert music.

This summer I'm a wee bit excited about the possibility of collaborating with an arts organisation to examine in some depth the agricultural practices patterns of land ownership in the Borders. How do you make art about such topics?

I don't know much about agriculture other than what I can read about, ask farmers about and piece together from lots of walking and poking around into fields, moors, woodlands and farmyards. My research is necessarily restricted. I've been wondering/wandering for a long time how to get inside the themes and topics relevant to agriculture and land ownership and have in previous projects produced some work from the perspectives of sound recording, photography, short film (my glacially-paced and ever-emerging series on The Landowner for example) and latterly text. There's no correct answer except that the best media are best within their own conditions and limitations. Even after many attempts I’m still not sure how you make art about agriculture though having doubts isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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What I'd really like to do, and have already begun in some investigations, is to find out from farmers and landowners how they see their work and land in say fifty or a hundred years, especially within the context of the forthcoming energy transition. A Northumberland dairy farmer I know told me that a century or so ago nearly everything was powered by the sun. Now it’s oil. I’m asking myself if we’ll see electric tractors and the end of nitrogen fertilisers made out of petroleum coke. I'd like to find out more - I only know bits - about the details of land ownership, rights and responsibilities, agricultural economics, how government policies affect farmers. I'm personally interested in public access to land, in particular why some landowners (but happily only a few) insist on making things as difficult as possible for people to enjoy the land simply and harmlessly, that is by walking on it. I've become fascinated by gates, fences, latches, clasps and hasps. I try very hard to understand barbed wire and electric fences. Perhaps I’ll start a Sears Roebuck style catalogue listing all the impediments to easy walking.

The more I learn the more I enjoy my walks. The more I walk the more I learn.