Oh, go on then

I wasn't going to play this evening. It seems that now the pressure is (finally) easing off at work I feel more tired than ever. All I wanted to do this evening was curl up with a book, leaving the allotment unwatered and not even bothering to start a new knitting project to take to my knitting group tomorrow. Well, the plot will have to stay dry tonight, but I've dragged my project out to cast on and I've done some piping.

My hands were cold and my pipes sounded odd to me. The fan says they sounded fine to him. It's like those mysterious days when the car seems to sound growly or rattly for no particular reason. Or the mysterious way in which 19 degrees (the standard temperature in the flat over the year) can seem blissfully cool in summer but unbearably cold in winter.

I worked on the Braemar Gathering, sticking to the first two parts and reading the dots rather than using them as a guide to the shape of things while I play what I think the tune sounds like. I don't know the tune well enough.

(As an aside I was thinking of The Session and the insistence there on the purity - even moral superiority - of playing by ear and thinking of all those great pipe tunes I have the dots for and perhaps will never hear anyone else play in my entire life, let alone hear often enough to learn...)

But, round and round with the A and B, working on timing, trying to throw in D grace wherever low A moves to C. It's a nice movement and ought to be simple enough. I played a few other bits and pieces but nothing sounded right or felt comfortable, and I almost wish I hadn't bothered at all.