How much?

Now that I've finished knitting the shawl I'm starting to plan other projects. I've wound a skein of crushed-berry coloured, hand-dyed silk bought in Basle a couple of years ago. I've bought a pattern, but I'm not sure if it's the right one for the yarn. I may use a pattern I already have, or I might buy another. In the meantime I've bought the pattern for a jumper and am pondering which yarn to buy.

Which is all very fascinating in itself, but doesn't obviously have much to do with piping, beyond forming one of my regular distractions. The point is that a knitting pattern is normally a pdf, so not even a physical object. There will be a front page with a picture of the pattern knitted up, a page of stuff needed to knit the item (the yarn, the needles), and possibly a list of abbreviations, although that might have a page to itself. It will close with some remarks on copyright and permitted use of the pattern, maybe some thanks to test knitters. There will be more pictures: a close-up, the item in a different colour, or worn by a different model. Somewhere in the middle will be one or two pages of actual instructions for knitting something. Sometimes these are free, sometimes to help promote a company's yarn and sometimes because it's a new designer. Often you have to buy the patterns, and that might cost between £3 and £5 or more.

Oddly enough I seem happy to buy the patterns, even when I'm not totally sure I am going to use them. Music, on the other hand, I have a real aversion to paying for. In some ways music is just another pattern, more instructions for making something. I've yet to see any fancy additions, any musical equivalent of pictures and abbreviations,  but then when I've seen charges for sheet music it's a lot cheaper than for knitting patterns.

I'm just as bad with books of music. There are several I'd like and I've not done anything about buying them, partly because, I suppose, I feel they won't be good value, I won't get my money's worth from them. And yet I have knitting books, and cookery books, on my shelves where I've really only ever used one or two patterns or recipes. So why am I happy to pay for the one and not the other?

The books of patterns or recipes often have additional information in them - perhaps some essays on knitting history or pictures of a particular country of region. I can sit and flick through either and get enjoyment and inspiration from them in a way I can't with a book of music. I can also tell from flicking through how many of the sets of instructions I am genuinely likely to use, whereas, as I've mentioned before, looking at printed dots tells me nothing about how playable or enjoyable I will find the tune.

A printed tune has limted use. Once I have the tune by heart the dots are useless. It takes me longer to get a recipe by heart, so I need to go back to my cookery book more often. I rarely knit the same pattern more than once, but would need the pattern every time I knitted it again.

A tune is not a thing, somehow. I can cook, share and eat a dish over and over. Once I have followed a pattern I have an item I can wear or use over and over. And although I can play a tune over and over for years it's somehow not a solid object in the same way as a dish for dinner or a pair of mittens.

I suppose one of the reason to pay for patterns is quality. Anyone can put together a pattern and share it round. When you buy a pattern you normally expect it to have been tested by a number of knitters, to have been technically edited, to be failsafe, to include a variety of sizes. A tune is a tune, and although the presentation on the page might be more or less clear, and gracing might be included or excluded, I've not generally found free printed tunes containing errors.

The other reason is that through the various knitting blogs I follow I appreciate that these (usually) women depend on pattern sales to make their living. Many of them promote their work through blogs. There is a feeling that you have a personal connection with the blogger.

That's something I really don't have with the composers of pipe tunes. Most of them seem to be dead, and those who are still living I know nothing about. And maybe that perceived personal connection makes all the difference. Because when I buy a pattern from an independent designer I'm not just gaining instructions; I feel as though I am suporting  small business, paying back into a blog I enjoy reading, even supporting my own escapist fantasy in which I, too, would sell a few patterns in between knitting, piping and gardening. I'm buying myself membership of a community.

And maybe it's just that I need to pay if I want good quality, up to date knitting patterns. Pipe music doesn't date and the older tunes do just as well and there is a lifetime's worth of free pipe tunes out there before I'd need to pay. Good quality recipes can now be had online for nothing, from various sources, some of which are trying to sell you groceries or utensils, others are  providing a public service (or possibly enticing you to buy the book of the TV show...).

So should I be happy to reap the musical benefits of free dots, or should I be putting my money where my elbow is? I really don't know.

Endings

Endings can be good news, as well as bad. I have finally finished the baby shawl. It's taken almost exactly three months, but it has been worth it. It looks fabulous, which may sound as though I am blowing my own trumpet, but really the credit belongs to the makers of the yarn and the pattern designer.

August is almost gone, and with it the fan's holiday and the extra time that gives me in the evenings and weekends. I've cut the lavender back - a whole week early, but it seems to have died off earlier than usual. The allotment season is rolling on, boosted by this late spell of unseasonable warmth. I am considering giving up my gardening notebook. I've kept it for 5 years, ever since I took posession of my plot. The gems of gardening lore noted there boil down to this:

1. No two years are alike in terms of weather and how the crops do.
2. Each year some stuff will do well, other stuff will not. Generally this is different stuff each year.
3. A good time to plant something is when you notice everyone else planting it.
4. You can never be too assiduous in picking out tomato sideshoots and should never forget that they shoot from the bottom as well as the top. 
5. It's worth sowing broad beans November and February, but not too late in November because the blackfly will ruin them
6. Don't forget to start pulling and using onions as soon as they are ready. Waiting for the tops to die and drying them is only needed for storing unused onions.

That's it: five years of gardening and notetaking boil down to six unoriginal points. So I am rather thinking of stopping my gardening notebook, although I am not at all thinking of giving up the plot, which I love.

And this notebook? I've been keeping it for a similar length of time and could probably precis it as follows: I'm not as bad as I was, I do seem to be improving, I do really need to play more often.

I have no intention of giving up piping. I've not done much of it of late (see above re shawls, gardening) but whenever I play I get an enormous amount of pleasure out of it. But I am not sure how much use or enjoyment I am getting out of blogging. I'd quite like to post some recent tunes, just to tie up the before and after, the blog as demonstration of actual progress. I suppose the blog jogs me into playing sometimes, just because I feel that I am not its only reader (posts get a fairly consistent 16 or 18 hits) and I feel some embarrassment that there are people expecting me to blog and that blogging in this case is somehow a proxy for piping. On the other hand I've used up a good number of hours blogging when I could have been piping, this evening being a prime example.

So is this the end? I'm not sure. If I decide that it is I will come back and make a formal farewell, just in case there are really people out there who have been following progress with me.

As you were

I haven't played for a while. As ever I have nothing much else to show for the lapse: still only on row 69 of the endless knitting project, weeds flourishing at the allotment, can't remember when I last completed a crossword, although I have been reading quite a lot of late.

Whatever the reason it's about two weeks since I last strapped on my pipes so I did so this evening with some trepidation. I worried that my new tunes might have melted in the recent heat, and that those I had polished would have tarnished.

As it turned out the first tune that came to my fingers was Flanders, which I thought I had forgotten entirely. After that everything came tumbling out: Perth, Valery, Vittoria, Flett, Dargai, Home Town, Sleat, Bonnie Galloway, Father John, Whaling Song. I had a couple of glitches in Women and Bee, which also needed a couple of goes to start it, but everything else seemed pretty much as I had left it. I even got the buzz....

Andy Murray's Compliments to Centre Court

If I was going to write a tune it would be a nice three-parter in honour of the fact that someone managed to get some stuff on his to do list done this weekend.

I only managed 20 minutes piping while waiting for dinner to move from one stage to the next of cooking. I also piled through a mountain of ironing, got some washing done, laid down a path in the fruit cage, planted out brassicas and tagetes and watched some other British sporting success.

The Djokovic moment

I meant to play yesterday but somehow didn't find the time. I played today before we went out, Dargai, Flett, Flanders, Perth (which is going through a tendency to muddle the opening of the A and B parts), St Valery.

I got to the session and was asked about the pipes, so explained, failed twice to get past the second bar of Dargai and played a messy version of Flett. Then I sat down and failed to get past the A part of Flanders, cravenly citing concerns with my drones...and this was before anyone else turned up.

I couldn't think of any tunes, the fan offered The King, but I lost track of it, twice, and crashed out. I kept thinking how badly I'd been playing, which made me bad-tempered. Later I tried Home Town, but my bellows weren't right, and I was pumping too much, which bothered me. I felt a little better having got to the end. I suppose it's like being two sets down and suddenly taking a set: a chance to focus on the set you took, the things you can do. But the things I apparently couldn't do niggled away.

Later on - it wasn't easy to get in between the two fiddle players - I played Father Macmillan and Whaling Song, which was too fast, mostly because I felt as thought my bellows were slipping down and wanted to get to the end before I lost them. Then another abortive attempt at Flanders, which I blamed on the fan's backing distracting me. The crosser I got with myself the worse I played, the worse I played the crosser I got.

My other Djokovic moment was wondering whether a month needs to be a calendar month. I've been trying to catch up at the plot this weekend and wonder whether June just isn't the right time to focus on something else. On the other hand knitting and some domestic issues have also taken up my time since early May. May itself would be no good as we are sometimes away at half term, April can be complicated by Easter, we often take holiday at the end of July...

I just need more days in the week...

And one for luck

I played this evening. I can hardly believe it's July. It's cool, damp and grey. The onions at the plot are rotting in the ground, half the strawberries have turned to mush. There's been so little play at Wimbledon that they are pondering play on the middle Sunday. I'd pipe more, only my hands are too cold.

Accidentally on purpose

I failed to play yet again yesterday. The fan and I made a 7 hour round trip to Bournemouth for a 90th birthday party. We left too early and arrived home too tired for any music. Found a good pizzeria on the way.

Flanders is almost there, which is good, because nice as it is to polish it's also good to have something new to show for my efforts.

Strike three

I haven't played today. Again. I'm not worried. I wasn't expecting to have time to play today as I needed to do a supermarket sweep and get some newly delivered plants planted out at the allotment, as well as cooking dinner. I did think that maybe after dinner...but it was 9pm by the time we were done, and now I'm drinking tea and knitting is calling and I just plain can't be bothered.

My polishing is coming on well, and I can normally play bits of either McIntyre, Creeks or Flanders. Not an awful lot to show for the effort, but the polishing is useful, I think.

Oops!

Yesterday I managed not to play, again. We had curtain rails to put up, curtains to hang, the aftermath of some decorating to tidy away, dinner to cook, a cake to bake... Something had to give.

Progress at the half way point isn't looking too bad. Father John is, if not quite shining like a national guitar, at least reasonably buffed up. Women is also improving, with more control now on the opening bars of the B part. More elbow grease required for Sleat, which my fingers still run away with.

Perth is doing well. I'm no longer confusing the 3rd and 4th parts, or forgetting the 3rd part, and speed is picking up nicely. St Valery still needs work. The 2nd and 4th are less likely to get confused but I'm not always getting the variations on the repeat of the 2nd part.

Barren Rocks first part is fine, the second is OK sometimes. I'm less convinced that it sits well with Atholl, which is requiring quite a lot of remedial work. The 4th part considerably slower than the others, the 1st having a tendency to be too fast, too untidy.

Flanders seems to be going the same way as the Creeks: lovely tune, recognise it when I see it, never hum it, can't play without dots, rapidly losing interest...  Lindisfarne and Planxty I think I am sometimes humming in parts, but neither tunes falls easily under my fingers, and a couple of note changes sound rather odd to my ear. In theory I like them rather a lot, but my fingers just haven't taken to them and I fear both will fall by the wayside before too long.

Credit where it's due

Poor Andy Murray. It seems he can never be good enough. He played in his 10th grand slam final at the weekend. There are only 10 men in nearly 50 years of tennis who have played in so many finals.  There are only 12 who have managed that across all four slams. He was beaten by the world number one tennis player, one of the few to have won all four slams during his career. Andy has come so far: it's really only a year ago that won his first tournament on clay. At the start of the French Open it didn't look as though he'd even make it into the second week. There was a time when he thought he'd never reach a final at Roland Garros. Andy is awesome, yet all the focus is on the thing he didn't do, the match he didn't win.

I mention this partly because tennis is one of my distractions, but also because I can sympathise. OK, I don't get to pick up large amounts of money, or get featured in Hello! magazine, or have to fly round the world or practise for hours or have ice baths. However, just like Andy whatever I do never seems quite good enough. However far I have come it's somehow never far enough. The fan said I did well at the session this weekend. I played three sets and a couple of standalone tunes, but mostly I envied the Irish piper his three page tune list, and got cross that I felt my timing wasn't as steady as it might have been, some of the fingering not as tight as it might have been, some of the control of bellows not as good as it should have been.

All we can do is struggle on and remember to give credit where it's due.

Epic fail

Well, a slight exaggeration perhaps. Yesterday was the first day of June and my latest challenge month and I played not one note. We raced out of the house straight after breakfast and didn't get back until bed time. It was a planned day out (to Birmingham, which I can heartily recommend to those who enjoy modern architecture, Victorian architecture, Victorian art, well kept civic spaces, English baroque  churches, railway stations, canals and shopping).

I printed out three tunes to try this morning. The first is fairly standard, just The Bloody Fields of Flanders, which I have been enjoying on Polbain to Oranmore. The other two are somewhat different, being modern tunes for border pipes. I was googling for Flanders, ended up on The Session and noted a comment by a Matt Seattle, who appeared to be a piper...and does indeed turn out to be that same Matt Seattle who gets mentioned in association with William Dixon in Common Stock from time to time. He has has own website and includes some tunes on it. The two I have chosen are Lindisfarne and Pringle Planxty. They are proving problematic, if only because they are, to my ear, very much not Scottish tunes and the things they do are not the things I expect tunes to do. The fan is quite taken with them. I am intrigued by Mr Seattle's bellows strap: it looks as though he has a shoulder strap, which I think is in addition to the body strap.

I've also been thinking about The Barren Rocks of Aden, one of my first tunes, long since abandoned. I've been wondering if it would make a good introduction for Athol Highlanders, also not played for an age.

Hello stranger

I've gone for morning playing again today. I'm slightly wary because I don't want playing to be one of the chores I have to get out of the way before I start on things I'd really like to do. The weather being a Bank Holiday special - grey, dull and cool - I've got nothing much planned other than more knitting and snuggling up with an Angela Thirkell.

I started off with a sudden urge to play in A, so dusted off the long neglected chanter. From the very first note I loved it: it's such a rich sound. The chanter felt huge, and it took an amount of adjusting hand position and stretching to achieve a half decent low G. I played through Perth, Women and Sleat. The wobbly G meant that the third part of Sleat was a mess, but otherwise it went surprisingly well. It did feel as though I needed a lot more effort on the bellows, and as if the whole instrument had doubled in size, so I gave up after those three but must go back to it again, maybe returning to my old plan of starting with A then switching after a couple of tunes.

After that I dug out music books and discovered that tunes I thought I had forgotten (Battle of the Somme, Green Hills of Tyrol, Over the Cabot, Trail Captn Angus L MacDonald, Compliments to Roy A Chisholm, Donald Dhu) are all actually still in the back of my mind somewhere.

I discovered Jacky Latin in one of the Willie Ross books. I also found that I do actually know several tunes that I had abandoned, feeling I'd never learn them. I found different versions of them (Return to India in Barry Shear's book and The Rejected Suitor in the Ross) and struggled to play them because the versions I already know kept trying to push their way in. Right at the end I played Dargai and Bee suddenly appeared, minus its new grace notes...

I gave up after over an hour, feeling like my arms might fall off. For my playing next month I might try to resurrect some of the pile of tunes that fell by the way (Farewell to the Creeks, Blue Bonnets I also played today). I'm half inclined to buy one of the music books on my list. The one thing that is still certainly a stranger to my play list is the strathspey: not a single one can I play. I feel that's a serious omission.

Buzzed off

In a break with tradition I played right after breakfast this morning. I'm a creature of habit, and generally feel that the morning is for chores, although at this time of year it's also for the allotment before it get's too hot, or, a more likely scenario, the weather breaks.

It was the allotment that made me change my habit. I was only there a couple of hours yesterday, which should have left ample time for piping. But two hours digging and weeding in the sun were followed by a rush to the local shops, some quick chores, a dive through tbe shower, cooking dinner...and when dinner was in the oven and I might have had my pipes out I was physically tired and lay on the sofa with a glass of wine instead.

In another break with tradition I just sat down and played non-stop, one tune after another, just in the order they occurred to me. I had been thinking to play some tunes, mainly Bee and Women in a slow and measured fashion, to really get a grip on the gracing (pun unintended!) In the end some tunes came out rather fast, and Miss Girdle just flew. She's still a bit untidy, though, like someone rushing out of the house, hatless, gloveless, hairpins dropping, still hoiking up her skirt and buttoning her blouse as she goes.

The one tune I didn't play was Loch Bee. I've been humming it a lot of late, but this morning I couldn't bring it to mind, or fingers. It just vanished.

Here is another recording from the other day. This is Magersfontein and Vittoria. It's working well as a pairing, I think, although the second half of the B part of Mags is suffering from some temporary glitches were those two little sets of fast notes are. Working on that.


Check this out on Chirbit

The old, old story

I am piping, perhaps every other day. I am feeling quite satisfied with my piping, feeling that it flows and is melodic. The tunes I hum during the day are the tunes that I am playing.

I'm still not happy with the size of my repertoire, which stays stubbornly small, although it is now a small number of sets, and some individual tunes, rather than just a small number of tunes.

I am happy with an adjustment that I keep forgetting to mention: I've finally settled on the ideal length for the tubing, and have lost all the problems with resting my wrist and numb fingers.

I suppose I'm not happy with how often I play. The allotment isn't as much of a distraction as it might be. For various reasons I've moved from growing from seed to buying plants, and I've been putting off buying plants while the cooler evenings persist. We've been having rain, to, so there is not much to do other than harvest rhubarb and pull up weeds.

In the meantime I am being distracted by reading and by knitting. That little piece up there is the first part of a very large, very lightweight shawl, knitted in cobweb weight Shetland wool. I need to do a lot of knitting between now and September when the intended recipient is expected.

I did manage to play and record at the weekend, but somehow haven't got round to blogging until now. This is Dargai with its new companions. I'm not 100% sure that they go together. Next month I do intend to play daily and perhaps the more I play this set the more it will sound like a set, just as the combination starts to sound familiar.



Check this out on Chirbit

Adjustments

I had the zero sum game sussed this evening, I thought. I made a positive decision not to do more weeding at the allotment, conveniently forgot about various household chores that need to be done, and decided I'd cook and pipe. It looked as though cooking would win out at one stage as I cheerfully threw in artichokes and peas and ginger and rhubarb crumble alongside asparagus and ricotta tart, but in the end I found some piping time.

I thought I'd play Magersfontein as I've been humming it all day, but it didn't come to my fingers so I let it be. I adjusted my Dargai set by playing that first with Bee following and Flett to close. I've made a minor adjustment to Bee, adding a doubling to the second or third note in. I've heard others play it, fiddled around to find the sound I wanted, and threw it in. Every time I play this doubling appears. I think this is the first time I've voluntarily added a grace without having to first beat it into my brain (I say "voluntarily" because sometimes they appear of their own accord.)

The other adjustment was to do with my belief in piping as a cure for headaches. For stress headaches, certainly, but the kind of headache you get with bad light and a PC screen pipes don't help.

Done and dusted

I have too much to do. I needed to shop on my way home this evening, cook dinner, and bake cakes. Once the cakes are done that’s the end of that…until the next time it’s the fan’s turn to take cakes into work, and dinner needs cooking every day of the week, unless we starve: even takeways would need ordering and collecting and eating every day.

Sometimes I think that work – my job – is the problem, in which case time off work would be the answer. The house needs cleaning, but if I took a week off and scoured and polished and reorganised the entire house from top to bottom, well, the dust would start accumulating again before I’d even got to the end. There is no meaningful way in which housework is ever “done”.

I could just spend that week knitting, and that way I’d get my jumper finished and make a good start on a shawl for my cousin’s baby. I’d almost certainly also think of a dozen other things I wanted to knit with stash yarn, and that’s before I’ve even thought of buying more yarn. I could decide that when the jumper and the shawl are done I’d be finished with knitting…but where would be the fun in that?

It’s ridiculous, really, this feeling that I have lots to do, lots to get done. That somehow the only good state to be in is one of having Got Stuff Done. It’s treating life like Christmas. The way that you think I just need to clean and shop and write cards, bake a cake, get a tree and put the decorations up, and post packages and travel or feed people and make up beds, and write thank you cards and take the decorations and the tree down…and then at last it’s all over! Which is when you realise you’ve not enjoyed the run up, and the day itself has come and gone, and all you can do is start looking forward to next year and promising yourself that you’ll enjoy the doing of it, the preparations, the doing of stuff, and not just look forward to twelfth night when you’ve got it all done. It’s the doing that is as important as the having got it done.

Why do I mention this? I suppose it’s partly feeling that the endless slew of stuff to get done is a zero sum game, whereby if I go home via the supermarket, cook dinner and bake cakes there won’t be any time for piping. If I go to the allotment I won’t get any further along with the knitting. I if do the crossword I can’t write letters. I can’t decide if I need to make piping more of a “must do” item – give it a higher priority, if you like – than other things on the list, or whether I just need to go with the flow, do the pressing stuff, and then whatever I feel like doing. I worry that I don’t feel much like piping at the moment, but then sometimes I don’t feel like knitting or reading or tackling the crossword.

I’m also wondering whether I am getting bogged down in the concept of a sort of piping D-Day (maybe that should be P-Day), on which the piping will be done. I will have learned all the tunes I want to learn, be able to play them all note perfectly on demand at sessions, never miss a grace note, never lose pressure. I will, at last, be A Real Piper! But actually, that sounds rather dull, and surely the only thing to do then will be to move on to something else. I need to enjoy the getting there more, enjoy doing stuff, not getting stuff done.

Stock take

I've managed a little piping this evening while the fan has been out. I don't seem to be finding time for it. The worrying thing is that I have no idea what I am doing with my time. The socks I am knitting are taking forever, I seem to have abandoned the jumper I'm working on, and haven't even ordered yarn for a baby shawl, so it's not that. The weather in the evenings is poor so I've not got to the allotment. My mail box is full of mail that I really do mean to get around to replying to...sometime. I seem to have been reading the same novel for the last month. I'm having trouble switching from the Indy to the Grauniad crossword and am giving up in disgust after the first 20 minutes or so. I can't even blame Pinterest as I have weaned myself off it.

I also have a pile of tunes going nowhere fast. I've cleared off my music stand and this is what I have.

1. Tunes that I actually know and I just need to get round to filing the music.
That'll be Heroes of St Valery. I had thought that this or Heroes of Vittoria might make a pair with Magersfontein or maybe Dargai, but they seem to prefer to be a twosome themselves.

2. Tunes that need work
The Hills of Perth. It's all there, just the 3rd and 4th parts keep getting transposed.

3. Tunes that are just ... meh
These are tune that I've played, and played, and probably have (mostly) by heart, and that I love listening to and that I wanted to learn and sometimes hum, but somehow never fancy playing now, so they don't get played and haven't bedded in and will join that long list of tunes that I can in theory play but never actually do.
Arthur Bignold of Lochrosque
John MacColl's Farewell to Argyll Squadron, Scottish Horse
Kilbowie Cottage
Farewell to the Creeks
The Hag at the Churn
And probably Braemar Gathering belongs on this list too

4. Meh tunes that I haven't quite given up on...yet
The Radical Road
Leaving Barra
The Return from India
The Rejected Suitor

5. Tunes I have printed out in a fit of optimism but not looked at
The Birken Tree
Jeannie Carruthers
The Pap of Glencoe
Leaving Glen Urquhart
Major David Manson
Mrs Macdougall
The Banjo Breakdown
The Pipe on the Hob

6. Tunes the presence of which I cannot explain
Well, the likeliest explanation is that the fan printed these for himself.
The Mist Covered Mountains
Janine's
The Easy Club

I maybe need some new tunes. I certainly need to embed my most recent tunes (Heroes of Vittoria and St Valery, Sound of Sleat, Women of the Glen). I need to play more.

Fortune cookie

It's damp and grey, so indoor pursuits are on the agenda for today. I've written letters, done a pile of ironing, wiped round the kitchen, run some washing, cooked lunch...but feel no inclination to pipe.

I'm thinking about Hector the Hero a lot. It was one of my early tunes, not played in years, but the flautist played it at the session on Sunday and it sounded good. I didn't join in, mostly because although I knew the tune was familiar I could't name it, I'm not sure if I actually know it well enough to play, and, my usual problem, that I had no idea if it was being played in "my" key.

I've also been listening to a new CD of Scottish fiddle music, which includes a few pipe sets, one actually with some pipes.

We've been away this week. We ate Chinese one evening. There were fortune cookies. My fortune said "just try your best". It feels like sage advice.

Frustrations

A bigger gap than I had intended.... I've played a little, but not much. I've been thinking a bit about classical music, which I've not listened to for years.

Today I've seen (in The Living Tradition) a review of a Scottish fiddle CD involving pipes and pipe tunes. I'd have ordered a copy only AllCeltic don't stock it, and I can't remember my Coda password. While I was at it I was going to buy Polbain to Oranmore, but it seems to be out of print and the only copy I can find is in a shop new to me, which sneakily swapped my request for standard (free) postage and then Paypal crashed out on me. So I've come away empty handed.

It's a bit of a theme today. I had to trudge round three separate garden centres before being able to track down asparagus crowns and seed potatoes, and even there I had to settle for Juliettes as there were no Charlottes.

(Mr Macleod himself sells Polbain,  but Paypal isn't playing ball there either...)

Gimme, gimme, gimme

I've had a tune in my head on and off these last few days and this afternoon I worked out that it is Saw Ye Never A Bonnie Lass from Reclaimed. The CD has the piper, Martyn Bennett, introduce the tune. I can't remember his exact words, but the general gist is that the tune is what the fan would call a bit of a pig, which is a tad offputting. Still, I would like to play it, and the dots are out there in The Master Piper. It's on my list of books I'd like.

I haven't (yet) rushed out to buy it, partly because I'm aware that I've yet to touch the book of quicksteps purchased recently. I've also got my eye on Freeland Barbour's The Music and the Land. And John Maclellan's collected works. Oh, and John MacColl's tunes. And Roddy MacDonald's. (Last Tango in Harris! Good Drying!)

And that's just the tune books. I've got a gap in my Deaf Shepherd collection. Anna and Mairearad have got a new CD out. I don't have the latest Battlefield Band offering, I'm missing a Kevin MacLeod CD, and I would love to track down  something that had a very good review in The Living Tradition.  I missed Blazin' Fiddles when they were in this neck of the woods and am tempted to indulge in a CD from them to compensate.

It's a while since I mentioned it, but I'm short of hours in the day. I did find time to play today though, and once I found a couple of parts of Vittoria and Perth that had gone awol everything went well.