Dorchester
January 1st, 1941
"Someone at the party said they had seen pipers piping downstairs, so a piper had to be sent for. Up he came - a god of beauty seven foot high, golden-haired, with skirts skirling, bonnet at a brave angle, ribbons flying, and that appalling noise coming from the pigskin under his arm. Then everyone swoons and says there's nothing like the pipes (there isn't, thank God) and then someone always asks him to play the tune he's just played and that doesn't surprise him as it's invariable, since no one can possibly recognise a tune on the bagpipes, or at best three notes of the one that put the idea into their heads. So round and round the small room he tramped, sometimes slow, sometimes quick march, and then he played a reel and no one could dance it but me and Ann O'Neill so off the old girls swirled, and the weight lifted from my heart for a while. So maybe there is something to be said for the pipes after all."
Diana Cooper to John Julius Norwich
from Darling Monster
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