I almost called this post "best yet" or "Morag's triumph". We went out to a session yesterday and I wasn't quite sure about playing. It took a while for us to find a seat and I was angled into a corner and a little worried about my sister who had come along to listen but got seated elsewhere. But she soon got chatting to someone and I got chatting to a couple of the other musicians, so when I was asked to play I went for it.
I decided to live dangerously and go with the King. As I suspected they might a handful of people joined in. I managed twice through, with mistakes - some quite clunky big mistakes - but I managed to keep going each time and pick up the tune again. My birls were poor, just because my hands were shaking so much I couldn't make a clean G.
When I'd done the fiddler (who is in the band) pronounced it my "best yet" and the applause seemed quite enthusiastic. The fan says my extra practice has paid off. I suppose if I normally only play two or three times a week then I actually got a couple of month's worth of usual practice into February. Or maybe I've just moved up into the next stage of beginnerdom now that I've been playing almost 18 months, or I'm just losing my stage fright, or maybe it was sheer fluke.
I played once more. I tried humming tunes to myself and couldn't reliably hum the one I wanted to play, so I stuck with the Rowan Tree, because it's so reliable and just falls out of my fingers somehow. I played twice through and ended with a long note so people could tell I was stopping.
I do definitely feel that I could - and should do better. But secretly I'm just a tiny bit pleased.
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