Morag's day out

After some dithering we decided to go to the Foresters session again, and a very good session it was, too. There's a mix of music, a mix of people, some very nice beer, and it's generally light-hearted and good fun. Morag and I had a go again. I went for the Banks of Allen thinking the fan might give some backing to hide behind, but no such luck. I fluffed and stopped - received applause and calls for an encore, so proceeded to mangle Bonnie Galloway.

I don't think I was quite as terrified as last time, just going by the fact that I only remember the first 3 seconds from last time before everything seemed to go black and nightmarish, and I remember the whole thing today.

Home again I played some more, feeling in the mood to carry on, and the fan joined in. With some encouragement from him I managed to up the speed of the Banks. To go back to the old car-driving analogy it's like being in a car on your very first time behind the wheel. Just as you feel you  have hit a dangerous and terrifying speed and are preparing yourself to hit hit G force and black out, your instructor kindly points out that if you go just a teeny bit faster you'll just about be able to move into second gear. I went at the speed of the very devil, I swear, and the fan said that I was just about approaching a half-decent pace. If I go any faster, said I, I shall need oxygen.

What I defnitely need is (all together now) more time to practice.

This is my 100th blog post, which is a milestone of sorts. No recording to go with it, but perhaps some sense of having moved a little way forward since I began piping in November 2011 and blogging back in February. Maybe if I spent less time blogging I'd have more time for playing, but I think that sometimes the feeling that I ought to blog has made me play. Although this is offically a private notebook I know there are silent listeners out there. They may not care much if I blog or not, but I feel a small sense of obligation somehow. No one knows if I don't play, but possibly someone somewhere knows if I don't blog.