New shoes revisited

Time played: about 40 minutes in two 20 minute blocks (working around dinner)

Tunes played: The Atholl Highlanders, Castle Dangerous, The Battle of Waterloo, Teribus, South Georgia Whaling Song (coming on quite nicely now),The Barren Rocks of Aden, The March of the King of Laoise, Alick C McGregor

Instrument: Monkey in A

Foot tapping: spontaneously (having forgotten all about it) while playing Battle. It's just that sort of tune.

Recording: None.

Notes: Not so much ordinary new shoes as that point in the autumn as a child where you go from 6 weeks of glorious barefoot freedom into white nylon knee high socks and clunky brown lace-ups. I had to pick up my practice chanter to remind myself how to hold A and get low G - I do it with the tip of my little finger. Wiggled the A chanter to get the right angle for that, and then found I had to pull the bellows round to make that comfortable. Enormous struggle with drones: the whole thing just seemed hungry for air, so I did without for the second half of my playing and started to feel more comfortable. Tunes going OK, D throws sounding good, low Gs sounding gorgeous (I noted the first time I played Ian Kinnear pipes how lovely the low notes sounded).