Nearly new

November is an auspicious month around here. It is the month of my birthday (don't ask), Morag's birthday (two!) and my birthday as a piper (also two, although the fan likes to point put that I played chanter for a year before that).

At the end of my second year of my piping life I feel good. I feel confident enough to tell people that I am a piper. I play in public. I know a handful of tunes. I really feel as though I have a good grasp of all the basics: I know how to play the pipes. It's not that there isn't more to learn, or that I can't improve in what I am doing - far from it. But I can just pick up the pipes and play without having to think about anything. Even if I have a break I don't feel as though I've gone backwards and need to pick up the threads again: I just get on with it. It's second nature, now, it's what I do.