Once and future...

A couple of Christmases ago someone gave me a nice mug. A mug for pipers! Let's not quibble about the fact that it has been drawn by some one who has clearly never seen a piper - note the bag apparently perching on the shoulder, and the missing drone.  It's my special piper's mug, for pipers (i.e. me).

Sometimes the sight of this mug in the cupboard is a rebuke. "Ha! Call yourself a piper? When did you last have your pipes out?!" Sometimes it's a joyful reminder "I am a piper!". Of late, things being as they have been for far too long at work, it's been a sad reminder of past glories, the good old days, when I was a piper.

Just to add insult to injury I've been sick this past fortnight. I don't think I've ever been so sick in my life. I've had to resort to the doctor, and submit to the taking of pills. I've thought vaguely about music, about blog posts, and I've unravelled a bit of knitting, but mostly I've read light novels and stared into space.

I've only listened to a very little music, mostly restful things: Duncan Chisholm and so on. Yesterday I listened to Doubling, forgetting (!) that there were any pipes on it, and when the pipes came they took me by surprise and made me cry. I'm too exhausted to play, and I can't even pick up my chanter, thanks to the laryngitis. It all seems so sad: this is my month of milestones, of my birthday and Morag's, of my beginnings as a piper. I've not played for so long

So now I am looking anew at my piper's mug. "One day", it seems to say, "you will be a piper again". Let's hope.