Thunderbolt City

The fan said today that I am doing better than he expected. It's not that he thought I wasn't capable, just that he doubted my ability to stick at it, given how many other instruments I've tried.

There are people who marry the first person they meet, and are happy 50, 60 or 70 years later. Many of us are less lucky and have to hunt around, which might entail everything from one night stands and disastrous dates to moving in, to give it a go... As I've mentioned before I played recorder at school - I think many people of my generation did. Before that, at my first primary school, I remember playing triangle for Away in a Manger and I have a tiny scrap of a memory that involves a concertina, but I can't have been older than four at the time. There was the violin, played to please my father. There was the trumpet, which was hopefully close enough to the baritone my sister played to be equally fun without being close enough to annoy her. That went well, and in the end it was a maths O level that came between us because I couldn't do both, and maths seemed more pressing at the time.

There was a guitar - Stairway to Heaven - taught by someone else's boyfriend... There were penny whistles, because Dad thought they'd be fun; there were ocarinas because they came in pretty colours. There was even a mouth organ, but I have no idea where it came from, and we never really worked out how to play it properly. The mandolin, of course, the mandola and bouzouki (too big).

Even when I started with my pipes they were a poor substitute. I'd fallen in love with those big, hunky GHB. I had romantic visions of me on a loch side with my pipes and the music. I wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of marching bands, uniforms, and kissing goodbye to my weekends.

And then, after a while, I stopped pining for those big, chunky, hunky GHB and fell in love with my little Monkey. Why would we not be together forever?

I'm pondering whether or not I feel I want to play every day in September. I've played today, just in case, but also because its the last of my 9 days of holiday. To mark the occasion I've also recorded! This is Cabot and Captain, again, this time with the Whaling Song. I start way too slow, partly because if I am too fast I go into Captain instead of the trail. I then fumble because I realise I have the dots, and worry they will distract me. I speed up. I make a few fluffs. I go through each tune twice.  I fluff in Whaling where there are what the fan calls snaps - at least, if they aren't there Id like them to be, but somehow they make me forget the next note. Whaling is too fast - you cold never sing at this speed. Tempo is something I must get fixed. No drones - and how thin the pipes sound without them. A bit lost. Which makes sense really, because pipes and drones belong together.


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