This is my last week on the Late Lounge. Have I enjoyed it? Yes, hugely.

Here’s the funny thing: The thing I’ve enjoyed most is the feeling that gathered round the glowing valves of any given evening is a community of people listening into the Late Lounge. Hearing your stories and some of you brilliant jokes (albeit sometimes unbroadcastable!) has made it very worthwhile. Knowing that people like hearing things they haven’t heard in a while or are enjoying new things is always very satisfying.

So thank you to you folk for making the show an interactive delight…for me if not for the listeners! There have been some great people who helped me through. Honourable mentions to Shona, Muslim, Anne, Mark and Richard. Big thanks to Tony Currie for his late night bonhomie and a huge thank you to Barbara Wallace and Sushil Dade for all their producing skills. I do want to give a particular mention to the woman who really created the Live Lounge. Roslyn McCuish I salute you, my dear. Go off and have yourself a lovely holiday.

After I return from my holiday I am going to enjoy getting my late evenings back. The one great thing you can say about the Scottish summer is that it may not be the warmest but the evenings do go on a little longer. When/if the weather does turn a little warmer we will celebrate it by hanging around in our garden or someone else’s until nearly midnight when the sky will sometimes still look like it has some light left in it. Wonderful. On these nights I’ll set off round the park and give my dog the late night walk she has been denied for these six weeks. I’ll do some reading which has also disappeared from my day and I’ll switch on the digital radio I got for my Christmas and listen to some great singer songwriters on Iain Anderson. You never know, I met get to hear some of my favourite records and some that I’ve long forgotten.

I know one or two of you have asked if I’d carry on blogging when the Late Lounge ends. I’m afraid I won’t. I’m off on holiday for one thing and for another I have completely run out of things to blog about! However I’ll do a deal: if I ever lounge around at BBC Scotland again I’ll open up the blog and we can all do it again. I have so many things to complete before I get away on my holidays that this is my last entry. I hope you have a great summer. I’ll be doing a weekly show called Ricky’s American Tunes in the early autumn and be back on the road in November. I hope I can meet some of you then. Thanks for taking part. All the very best

Ricky x