Two plus one

We were away at the weekend and flung ourselves back up the motorway from Surrey and Sussex with just enough time to grab a cup of tea and a slice of toast before racing out to the session.

What with one thing and another (the Bank Holiday, last month's visiting fiddler having fallen out with the landlord) it was just the two of us and the ever reliable Irish piper. The pub was busy, the snooker was on the big screen (without sound, thankfully), I was tired and disinclined. The omens were not good.

And yet...once the piper arrived and we got going it went well. The drinkers applauded from time to time, a few of them jiggled about in a loose approximation of Irish dance. The piper played with the fan supporting on bouzouki. The piper accompanied me on pipes or whistle while the fan provided backing. I played along with the fan on his mandolin. We all pitched in together with the fan swapping between mandolin and bouzouki, the piper between pipes and whistle.

I played Flett and Bee (which was a bit raggedy so only went round twice). I played John Macmillan and Whaling Song. I played My Home Town. I played Women and a mangled bit of Sleat on the end of it. I played Magersfontein and Vittoria. Right at the end I tried Valery, but abandoned after three parts as tiredness and the effects two glasses of white wine on an almost empty stomach kicked in.

At one stage the fan, on mandolin, struck up Braemar. I knew he was trying to tempt me, and I gave him a straight refusal. Play it often over endless months as I will it just won't come up to session standard. He rolled into Somme. I said no: it's not a tune I play. And then he came to Dargai, and I felt I couldn't let him get away with playing one of *my* tunes. I waited until he moved on to the B part, feeling that to be safest, but was thrown when he looked at me and said "B". He meant B part, but for one confused moment I thought he was warning me off joining in on the grounds that he was playing in the key of B. I managed to fling myself into the tune as the B part repeat came round, and at the end of his third playing he insisted on one more. It was only afterwards that I realised this was a first: joining in with others, mid-tune, in a session.

By 9pm we were all in and crawled off home, leaving the Irish piper playing to himself in a now empty pub. He noted, before we left, how my repertoire is expanding. It's getting better, I guess.