Recent news that Bob Dylan was putting his Highland mansion up for sale has shocked some fans. After all, didn’t he write “My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam / That’s where I’ll be when I get called home,”  in the song ‘Highlands,’ from his Grammy award-winning 1997 album Time Out of Mind?

However, those of us on the inside know the true story.

As regular readers of this blog will attest, I have had several encounters with the Sage of Hibbing in recent years: until the other day, the most recent of these was when he was working as a Morrison’s delivery driver in Glenrothes, in the Scottish Lowlands.

So it was not completely surprising to me that last Friday, after I had ordered my coffee at the Empire, one of my habitual south Edinburgh haunts, and taken my usual table, I heard a voice like sand and glue  behind me asking for ‘Americano. Black. Nothing else. Uh, unless you have turmeric tea?’

‘Bob?’ I said. ‘Three times in three years: this is getting embarassing. Care to join me?’

The waitress, a perspicacious young woman, gave my table companion a second glance, but evidently didn’t connect the slightly dishevelled elderly man in a hoodie with the writer of such epics as ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Simple Twist of Fate,’ to name but two.

Dylan (for it was he) fixed me with a suspicious glare. ‘I thought you lived in Glenrothes.’

‘I did, Bob, and then I moved. Coming up for two years ago, in fact.’ I turned round the newspaper article about the sale of Aultmore House so that he could see it. ‘Speaking of moving house. It says you’ve not been up there since Covid. It also says it’s because of you being unable to get there. But…’

Dylan waved away my question before I got to ask it. ‘I know, I know. It was just easier to explain it that way rather than go into all the business with Glenrothes, and working as a delivery driver at Morrisons, and all that…’

I supposed that it was. Our coffees arrived and His Bobness went on. ‘I had to sell it. Shannon wouldn’t go there. It was the midges.’

Ah, yes, Shannon, the reason Dylan had, on a random visit to Glenrothes at the height of the pandemic, stayed on in the Fife New Town. Their eyes had met at a Morrison’s checkout, and romance had blossomed, leading the songwriter to spend several lockdown months in a loved-up state in a Caskieberran maisonette.

However, a childhood excursion from her home town had convinced Shannon that a) the Highlands was full of suspicious, unwelcoming locals (to be fair, that could have been her experience back in the day – not so now) and b) soft Southerners were prone to be eaten alive by the ferocious Culicoides impunctatus, or in the Gaelic, Meanbh-chuileag.

‘Ah,’ I said, sipping the Empire’s excellent Americano. Did she go up late summer/early autumn, by any chance?’

Dylan nodded. ‘It was her birthday. 29th August. She’s never forgotten.’

‘Well, there’s your problem right there,’ I said. If you go late Spring/early summer, they’re not nearly so bad. August/September, they’re at their worst.’

He cast his eyes skyward. ‘D’you think I don’t know that? That’s what I’ve been a-tryin’ to tell her, all this time. But once Shannon makes up her mind on something…’

I knew what he meant. I remembered my own unproductive discussions with the lady when trying to return a red wine to Morrison’s that had been corked. Wine buff or internationally acclaimed recording artist, you could run into a brick wall when it came to Shannon.

The Empire was doing brisk business meantime, mostly people getting takeaway filled rolls. No one cast a second glance at the hunched figure opposite me. ‘So what will you do?’ I asked him.

‘Well, that’s why I’m here, neighbour,’ he said with a wink. Doin’ some house huntin’ in this area. Got any advice?’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Well, if you want something secluded, rather than living above a bunch of posh students and their dinner parties, you might do well to hold onto that £3 mil you’re getting from the sale of Aultmore House. Incidentally,’ I said, moving effortlessly into salesman mode, ‘If you’re in Edinburgh on the 22nd July, we’re doing a gig where we play the whole of ‘Oh Mercy.’ Pretty sure I could comp you in, old buddy.’

‘Oh Mercy? Good choice, my friend. But, uh, I think Shannon’s got something on that weekend. You know what the social scene’s like in Glenrothes…’ He consulted his watch, a gesture which would have been more convincing if he’d actually had a watch on. ‘Anyways, gotta go meet an estate agent. Good luck with the gig though.’

As I watched the Greatest Living Songwriter depart, I realised that he’d left me with the bill for both coffees.

His heart may be in the Highlands, but his wallet’s not always so easy to locate. He must be part Scottish after all.

For more details of the gig, go here.