Worst dreams

Sometimes when I dream I dream of every day things, of my life, but everything is just a little bit worse in dreamland. So in my dream I will be at my allotment worrying about weeds. So far, so much like the waking world. Except that in my dream the plot is two, three, four times the size of its daytime equivalent and the small scattering of weeds becomes a jungle.

I've been worrying about piping in much the same way, daydreaming. On the plus side I've been thinking music, humming tunes, mainly McIntyre's Farewell, and that's good. But I imagine myself playing and I criticise that playing, and come up with a plan. I must stop flapping and twitching and hunching around my bellows. I must play notes cleanly. I must relax my hands on my chanter. I mustn't race. I mustn't let the chanter slip when I take my thumb off to play a high A.

I come home and I pick up my pipes and I notice that I don't twitch, notes are clean, fingers are soft and relaxed, I play at an even pace, the chanter doesn't slip. I wasn't comfortable with bellows at the weekend and one drone seems inconsistent - kicks out - which I think may be a loose joint (I've got beeswax on order from our local hardware shop to go with my hemp), and may be lack of use. I played with drones on Monday and felt panicked, as though I couldn't do it, had slipped back and lost all my learning. But actually, today, flipping them on and off for one tune or another, it was fine, it was good.

I may not yet be a dream piper, but it's far from the nightmare I sometimes envisage.