Lost and found

I'm afraid I lost my rag a little this evening. I squeezed in playing around cooking so had to keep interrupting myself to put various pans on and off the hob. I had my list of tunes, and from the outset I really struggled. The pipes seemed to be slipping out of my arms, I seemed to lack pressure, the bellows felt worse than useless. I was compensating for a lack of grip on the pipes with tension in my fingers, and I thought of all the things (outside piping, and generally rather trivial) that are bugging me right now, and that distracted me from the tunes, and when I failed to get through Troy  in one piece I gave a great roar of frustration...

Somehow, as I roared I knocked the drones switch, snarled at the drones and tunred them off again. I wonder if the drones switch had been partially engaged as flicking the switch seemed to improve the pressure, which enabled me to concentrate and get Troy  licked, although the 4th part took a couple of attempts. I fiddled about with various items on the hob, came back and calmly played Troy again.

I played everything except Father John and the Highlanders. Only bits of Sleat as I couldn't remember all of it.

At the end of playing I sat down with the pipes feeling just right , played around with some phrases, slow and steady and stately; things that just fell out of my fingers. Then Dargai and Amazing Grace, and I went back to the hob.

"That sounded nice," said the fan. "What did?" I asked. "That first piece at the end there. The slow air."  I had to admit that it was just improvisation, but surely it says something about how I am learning the musical idiom, the patterns and sounds, that I can fool the fan into thinking I'm playing a real tune when all I am doing is having a quiet moment with the Monkey, reassuring ourselves that we are friends, that everything is all right between us.