Ghost in the machine

Of course, having decided that the buzz is simply the result of a certain level of pressure I played around with bag, bellows and elbows in the hope of finding that perfect point. I could't find it.

Not only could I not find it, I suffered from the opposite of the buzz - a thing so awful that it has no name. It feels as though everything is flat - not musically flat, but dampened and dulled like a grey day or a really drab shade of brown. The sound seems to lack any vibrancy, is almost muffled, and the chanter feels lifeless in my hands. After a while things improved, but whether that was to do with the reed warming up, my fingers warming up (it has turned cold here rather suddenly), or a change in pressure I don't know.

Something else I thought I understood the workings of is my musical memory. It only takes me a handful of play throughs to pick up a simple two parter. That may be generally true, but it doesn't work for Isles, which I play over and round and the moment I stop I can neither hear, see, nor hum a single bar.

I've been playing Flanders slowly and plainly with only the necessary graces (I think, although other may creep in if my fingers feel so inclined) but listening to the rather more ornate, and rather wistfully lovely, version of Mr Macleod I'm wondering if that needs to change.

Miscellany

Yesterday I played. I remembered all the tunes I wanted except Flanders, which I couldn't bring to mind, or fingers. I couldn't lay my hands on dots, either.

I had dots for Braemar, but couldn't play it. At least, I couldn't play the first part, mostly because I was trying to play a GDE gracing on the opening pair of low As. Once I remembered it was a low G I wanted the whole tune fell back into place. Bee, which was posted missing a while back, turned up on my musical doorstep, a little dusty and footsore, but otherwise intact.

Today I printed dots for Flanders and as soon as I lifted the sheet of paper from the printer the whole tune fell back in to my head, rendering the paper useless. It's a mystery to me, this whole musical memory thing.

There was something else I wanted to write about this evening, but that has also gone. Like Bee, like Emmeline, who slipped through the trees, I am sure it will turn up later.

I've been listening to all sorts of things in the car. Queen, Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac. Some of it now only seems to have value because of the memories it invokes. I love Simon's language, his ability to tell a story. I think to myself that his greatest hits is the best short story collection I know.

This evening I listen to Rostropovich play Bach's  cello suites. No nostalgia required here. It's some of the most moving and beautiful music I know.

They all rolled over

I  need a memory upgrade. I realise that I am, reasonably succesfully, playing my new tunes: Valery, Perth, Flanders. If I rack my brains I also play Magersfontein, although now that it's definitely a set with Vittoria it almost counts as a new tune.

Then there is Flett, maybe Father John and Whaling Song. After that I, have to think, to check my note book, to see that there is also Bee, King, Dargai, Bonnie Galloway, McIntyre's Farewell, Rowan Tree, My Home Town... Even the recent pairing of Women and Sleat gets forgotten. And that's without thinking about the eternally unfinished Miss Girdle, Braemar, Wedding or any of the other tunes that I can play, or at least used to be able to play.

My musical brain is clearly less like Spotify and more like a juke box or old fashioned CD changer with room only for a fixed, and rather small, number of tunes. It's reasonably easy to slot a new one in, but in order to do so I have to take another one out.

When you change with every new day

I thought that while I was polishing that perhaps Dargai could do with a quick buff up, so I played that, followed by Flett and Bee. Yes, Bee. I had to give it a poke, but there it was, without the new grace at the very first point, but thereafter note perfect.

Then I started humming and played a few bars, and then an entire A part of Flanders, having pretty much given it up for dead. I didn't go looking for the B part, because really I had been in search of Creeks. I couldn't find them. Gone. What I found instead was McIntyre's Farewell, like the Bee, note perfect and in full despite its prolonged absence. I stuck the Captn on the end.

I shall wait with interest to see which tunes materialise tomorrow. I suspect that McIntyre and Creeks, perhaps because they share 2 or 3 opening notes, will be one of those odd pairs that cancel each other out so that I can never hold them both in my head at once.

Spoke too soon

When I played yesterday I thought that the Bee was back. It appears it was only passing through as today I haven't a clue how it goes. I can't even conjure it up with the old trick of starting on the B part: not a single note will come to me.

This evening I decided to play a token tune or two, not really feeling in the mood. However, once I started everything fell into place, tunes fell out of my fingers and I only gave up after an hour once my bellows elbow started to ache (which I am blaming on the knitting project rather than the piping.)

Before I stopped I thought I'd try McIntyre's Farewell, which I used to play at sessions, although it's not a tune that tne fan is keen on. Various bars came back, but no more, so I headed to the bookshelf, humming as I went. As soon as I saw the Barry Shears book I knew it wasn't the one I wanted because the tune I was humming was Creeks. Despite previous comments  I do apparently know the tune, can hum it, and can play pretty much all of it. What I can't play, even with the dots, is McIntyre's Farewell, because everytime I try it morphs into the Creeks.

Do not disturb

I played this evening with no dots. I managed the first two parts of the Horse with no problem at all. Hills of Perth was fine, except that the 3rd part was mysteriously missing and nothing would bring it to mind. Still, when I tried this earlier in the week it only had two parts, so I can't grumble.

It took a number of false starts to get to Kilbowie Cottage, and when the first part appeared I didn't recognise it. Bits of the 2nd and 3rd part were there, which is worse than earlier in the week when I managed both parts in full without too much trouble.

I had real problems with St Valery. I went round and round, pulling out Father John, bits of Leaving Barra and Vittoria,  but not a note of Valery could I play, hum or picture. After a while I had a quick peek at the dots and noted the opening four notes. That didn't help. Playing the high A, thumb grace, grip that I know is in the 4th part didn't help. I went back to the dots and looked over the first part. It was like looking at a foreign language: I could see the dots, but they made no sense. Then right at the end of the first part I suddenly recalled the tune, ran off to try it, but struggled to get the first part. Again, a real regression from earlier in the week.

But I can't decide what to do for the best. Should I let the tune ferment undisturbed and wait for it to bubble up when it is ready? It's a tactic I've tried in the past and sometimes it works and other times the tune simply falls into disuse and I forget I was even trying to learn it. Should I go back to dots? Should I listen to the tune more (I've got Springwell on the CD player now) and hope it comes that way? Or should I just keep trying to play it unaided? Even after all these years of learning new tunes it seems I have no clue what the best way to learn might be.

Recording is of an established tune (for me) and a session favourite. I am  hoping it might demonstrate a general improvement in my playing. It's My Home Town.


Check this out on Chirbit

Fancy that!

From time to time I glance over some of the discussions on The Session. My eye was recently caught by one on musical memory, especially as the opening poster was looking for tips on remembering. As ever the comments varied from the flippant to the serious, but the general gist was that memory works in mysterious ways.

One poster mentioned Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, so I trundled out to borrow it from the library. It is an interesting book, not too technical, and well written. Dr Sacks was (he died in 2015) clearly a well-read and cultured man and as well as citing standard journals such as JAMA he mentions Darwin, Henry James, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, Nietzsche amd Proust, among others. He was also a musician from a musical family.

I suppose the clue is in the word "tales" in the title, because in the end it is not much more than a collection of fascinating anecdotes and case stories about the strangeness of the human brain in relation to music. The most concrete finding seems to be that music is independent of other types of memory, so that a man who cannot remember the day of the week or his wife's name will still be able to play from memory hundreds of pieces of music. Learning music may also be different from other types of learning, allowing someone who has never learned to tie their shoe laces, count muffins or draw an elephant to be able to accurately play and sing. Music is also linked in to emotion differently from other things, so where emotion is deadened by dementia, Parkinsons, psychopathy, autism or brain injury, music may bring emotion out.

So all very fascinating, and full of human interest, stories sad and happy, but very short on anything on how musical memory works, and therefore how one should best go about learning.

I suppose it's not surprising. Even my own experience is mixed. Some tunes fall into my head after one or two times having them as background sound in the car. Others will not stick despite repeated listening, on a loop, while doing nothing else at all. Sometimes I can throw dots away almost at once, for other tunes I need weeks or months with dots. Some tunes I can only play once they start to play themselves in my head, other tunes I learn very well but never spontaneously hum. Some tunes I can get if I "look" at the picture of the dots in my head, for others I struggle to "see" the dots, can't "see" enough to help, or just don't need those phantom dots. Songs I find easier to remember, I suppose because I can memorise words more easily than notes, follow the internal logic of the song (most trad songs tell linear stories), and then use the words and fragments of melody to piece together a likely whole.

I think this will all boil down in the end to more practice...

Nightmare

There is a point where a tune wriggles its way into my consciousness in a way that means it bubbles along under everything else. It’s there of its own accord and sometimes it takes a while for me to notice it, and sometimes I have to stop what I am doing to listen to it, to hear what tune it is.

I say “hear” although it isn’t something in my ears, just in my mind. But it’s independent of my conscious mind. Once I’ve noticed it’s there I can make a decision to temporarily stop it, although once I go back to thinking of other things it will bubble through again. I can also make a decision to switch to another tune, although again the first tune might come back once I’ve taken my attention away.

Sometimes there is a previous stage, before the tune has embedded itself. The tune is in my head, but somehow requires my attention to keep it going, at least, I feel that it does, and somehow it is important not to let the tune stop. This seems most often to happen overnight. I feel as though I am constantly being woken by the tune, and the need to keep the tune going, and somehow it feels as though there is an almost physical effort on my part to keep the tune moving. There is certainly an element of concentration. I’m not sure whether I am, or feel I am, needing to pick the next note along, as if I were playing the piece, or whether the note is there, I just need to make the effort to hear it.

It happened last night with the Horse. I feel as though I’ve been awake half the night, flogging that horse along. At one point I think there was another tune, possibly Cottage, and I was keeping the pair of them going, like spinning plates.

Once I woke up I was busy listening to the radio, getting ready to go out, driving to work, chatting to a colleague, tracking down some stuff, concentrating on a number of things and not noticing if I had a tune or not until I went to make a mug of tea. As I stood waiting for the kettle to boil had The Women of the Glen in my head. Later in the day it was Cottage again, but somehow at an embryonic stage. It runs in my head but once I stop to listen to it then it stops, unless I consciously think how it goes next, which I suppose is what is happening with the new tunes in my sleep.

I’d be interested to find some research on this as I can’t be the only person who has had this experience. Oh, and I played this evening...

A horse, a horse...

The horse has been trotting about my head all night and all day. It's a lively beast, more like a skittish pony than an old warhorse. It was inevitable that the moment I picked up my pipes the horse fled. (This was going to be my cue to link to a video clip of Peter Cook as Richard lll in Blackadder whistling for a horse...a horse..., but I've failed to find one).

Still, I listened to the CD, then worked on the horse, the cottage, Arthur and the Creeks. I think that possibly Farewell to the Creeks, if not played very slow on its own, might pair well with Heights of Dargai, now that Flett and Bee have run off together.

This is the end of my challenge month, and it will be nice not to feel obliged to play, but I think the call of these new tunes will keep me going. This month I've improved my speed, I think, and improved the balance between speed and accuracy. That is, the speed at which accuracy goes out of the window is faster than it used to be. I feel I'm also gracing more neatly, and thinking more about what gracing I want.

As if by magic

Kilbowie Cottage appeared in my head today. It's at that stage where I can hear it, but on the whole I can't hum it, and even if I sit and listen to it the moment I pick up my pipes it vanishes. The bits I can hum I can play: that's most of the A part, just about by heart, with a slightly muddled mess in  the two bars in the middle.

I find that the dots guide me in the shape of the tune, confirming the notes I can hear in my head, but where the timing is wrong in my head, or not there at all, I struggle even with the dots to play the tune properly, despite being able to read music.

I've had tenderness in my right index finger this week, at the middle joint and tip, and soreness in my elbow and shoulder. I am hoping it's excess use of a PC at work and that it won't interfere with what seems at the moment to be an insatiable desire to play. It has meant that I've failed to be comfortable with my bellows and had to abandon before doing my elbow serious damage. It's a shame, because apart from feeling the love and being keen to get this tune sorted, I just started getting the chanter buzz this evening, and as well as feeling good that always sounds fantastic and spurs me on.

Non stick

Kilbowie Cottage has been on my wish list for a while. I've got it on Highland Strands, which I have on pretty much a permanent loop in the car at the moment. It's a fantastic album. The odd thing is that although I think that I love Kilbowie I can never remember what it sounds like until I hear it. Of all the scraps and oddments from the CD going round my head Kilbowie is never one of them. I know it's best to learn a tune I can already hum, but even having the tune on repeat doesn't help, and I do want to play it, so...

I printed the dots, began to play, failed to make head or tale of it, wondered if I had printed the wrong tune (as I think I've mentioned before it is just Kilbowie Cottage and both Braebach and Kevin Macleod list it as John McColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage), abandoned and succumbed to the urge to play John Macmillan. Played a few other tunes, John Macmillan popped up again, went back to Kilbowie and fell straight back into John...

Eventually I remebered that I had The Big Spree indoors so listed to Kilbowie on there, where I discovered that actually it is rather like John  in the opening bars, and that it has some tricky timings, and it is a lovely tune, and it slips right through the hands of my musical memory.... In the end I managed a reasonable rendition of the first part, but it's going to be a harder one than I thought, especially while it remains so elusive to my aural memory.

Lost and found

Back from a few days away, discovering that UK train travel can be reasonably comfortable and convenient, albeit expensive especially if you make the mistake of waiting to get on the train before you grab sandwiches, hot drinks and muffins for two (just over £18!)

Unfortunately somewhere between the train and the waiting car I mislaid a handbag with purse, house keys, library book, my knitting pattern and various knitting bits and bobs. My wonderful graphic memory let me down as although I can picture the bag and contents, including texture, smell, colour and weight in minute detail I cannot for the life of me recall at what point I parted company with it all...

Trying not to think it over and over I eventually managed to get rid of the tormenting pictures by pulling in some tunes instead, and wished I had had my pipes with me.

Pipes and I were back together this evening having found an unexpected half hour. Mostly working on gracing, and really I am ashamed to say that those most often missing from my playing are two of the simplest, so there is no excuse for forgetting them: D and E.

The Women were here, and this time I think they are ready to stay. I do also think that they will pair with Sleat, which will give me a second set with a missing strathspey. At least, I think it's a second set: I was pretty sure that Father John's Boat Trip was also a march and reel and that I had addressed that in a post which I thought I had called "The case of the missing Strathspey", but now can't find. (Found it.)

No women or heroes in Magersfontein

Those pesky women still hadn't reappeared by this evening so I flushed them out with the help of the dots. B part still needs work to get it into my musical memory.

Since they were there I tried to introduce them to Magersfontein or Heroes, but no mattter which way  I tried I couldn't make a pairing, far less a threesome. I even threw in Flett, but that was a non-starter as well, so after my initial flurry of excitement around sets I am back to a pile of stubborn singletons.

After that Bonnie Galloway, Loch Bee, Braemar. I am trying to take this last nice and slow to check I have notes and timings all in the right place. It sounds, at a slower pace, rather naked without much gracing.

It was one of those evenings where the chanter literally buzzed in my hands, always a really good feeling. I have no idea whether it's to do with temperature or humidity, or is just my imagination, nor do I know what, if any, effect it has on the sound.

I had to stop mid way to rearrange various items in and out of the oven. When I came back the buzz was still there but the bellows jammed themselves on my wrist, my right thumb seized up, and Troy came out as a bit of a mess.

Chocks away

I've been thinking of late that I am hanging on to dots for too long and allowing myself to get dependant upon them. So this evening, as the Women had come back during the day, I decided throw caution (or dots) to the wind and just go for it. The A part is there already and the B part is there in parts, with confusion over the first second versons of the B. So really I've only been playing it a couple of days and it's half memorised already. Ok, so I had a head start with knowing the tune, but I had been worrying lately about how slowly I was picking tunes up. I think my experience with Braemar and Troy both show that I need to throw off the dots and not lean on them.

Sleat is still troublesome with the variations in the 2nd and 4th parts getting themselves swapped over. Braemar needs a bit more control, a more even tempo. Troy needs more confidence. John Macmillan needs me to listen to it a bit more, but is generally good.

Hearing things

I've had the Women of the Glen going round my head, day and night, it seems. It's somehow tiring to keep hearing a tune, and it's not far in the background of my brain, it's at the front all the time, just, but not quite, at the point where I find myself humming a tune. The only respite was while cleaning my teeth when it was suddenly, inexplicably, but temporarily, replaced with Joy to the World.

Of course, when I decide to print it (yesterday I played it straight from my tablet), it slipped away, and by the time I had my pipes out it was a bit of a struggle to remember how it went at all...

Apart from the Women,  and a brief and inelegant appearance by Miss G,  I stuck to the old tunes: Magersfontein, Dargai, Loch Bee, King of Laoise, My Home Town, Rowan Tree, Bonnie Galloway, Amazing Grace, McIntyre's Farewell. I skipped Whaling Song because it gets played with the new tune, and I forgot all about Flett. I definitely need to make that list of tunes I know...

Preliminaries

Something of a trial run for September today. Problems feeling that the bag lacked air, and difficulty in getting my bellows elbow or wrist comfortable. My fingers were a little tense, too, perhaps because I don't feel very warm today. I notice that these days hitches like this don't put me off or spoil my enjoyment of playing at all, perhaps because I know they are only passing fads.

I looked at the handwritten dots that the fan had found in a pile and quickly discovered that it wasn't the Ocean. Had in mind a bouncing finger on F, tried that...and there it was: part A of the Ocean. The fan heard it, asked if I'd found the dots. In a way I had - albeit the tune rather than the dots, and that was in my head all along. I think I'll need the fan to walk me through the B part again, and probably write that down.

Othe tunes played were The Sound of Sleat, Atholl Highlanders, Troy's Wedding, Braemar Gathering, Horsburgh Castle, Heroes of Vittoria and Teribus.

Drops of Brandy is having problems where I keep forgetting that the final triplet in each part drops to G, and I am playing A instead. Oddly this is one where I find the B easier than the A, or at least the transition from A to B is easier than that from B to A. Then the Dragon. Still doesn't feel right, but I still can't put my finger on what exactly is wrong with it. Maybe a recording is needed so I can listen. It seems to have a good amount of gracing, the speed is good, I like it as a tune to play. Maybe it's that it doesn't feel very complete by itself.

Still, a good start, I think.

You don't know until you try

There was a time when part of what I was keen to learn, and to demonstrate I had learned, was the ability to play tunes from memory. I now know that, given time, I can indeed play (a handful) of tunes from memory. So these days when I set out to learn a tune I am not setting out to play it through without dots, so much as play it evenly, with the correct timings, appropriate gracing, decent speed and so on. I don't know that this has necessarily turned into a dependence on dots, but it has certainly led to a feeling that it's taking me an awful lot longer to learn tunes by heart.

Today, rather by accident, I discovered that I know the first two parts (all I am currently playing, partly because I'm not 100% sure of the timing in the other parts, and partly because two parts are easier to learn than four) of John Macmillan. I hadn't tried because I really thought I hadn't got it in my head at all, but there it wss.

This may be down to having put Synergy in the CD player in the car, where my feeling is that I play the track over and over and generally only notice the point at which the next tune in the set kicks off and I realise that I have missed John, again. Clearly it has sunk in, from listening, and from playing, and I have not lost my ability to grasp the basics of a tune within a week or two. I'm pleased that a reasonable amount of grace notes have been sucked into my playing memory with the main dots. I now need to improve what I have learned, especially the timing in the second part of the B part, and then consider learning the next two parts, and finding it a set partner.

The other thing I want to learn is the origin of the word "Father" in the title as listed on the CD. I have it on dots from the session, where perhaps it was picked up from Synergy. But why is it there on the CD? They have pipers, they must know Donald Macleod, which is where I have dots from (book 1). It's not a trad tune, with origins lost and titles confused over the years: Macleod attributes it clearly to Norman Macdonald, Glasgow. A bit of research required...

Still having problems with cold/numb right hand, positioning of bellows, and still sticking with D, having not played A at all since who knows when.

Notes from the tune clinic

This is the current list of tunes being nurtured. The goal for each of them is that they are fit to be seen out at a session. Their problems are varied.

Horsburgh Castle. Diagnosis: unclear. I did wonder if actually I just don't like it, but I hum it often, and when I play it...yes, I do like it. Maybe it would sound better in A. Almost committed to memory, but regular lapses. Perhaps it's just waiting for its set-mate, Miss G.

Miss Girdle. Now she has got over her identity crisis she's recovering well. Suffering from a lack of grace notes. Slow in her movements, but gradually getting faster.

Troy's Wedding. Long term patient. A part fine and dandy. B part OK if I get the gracing right - a slightly sticky finger prolonging a grace throws me into confusion. C part either goes very well or goes too fast and goes wrong. Fingers often too tense at this point. D part - intermittent memory loss.

South Georgia Whaling Song. Tendency to go to fast and for snaps to either not appear at all or go so fast they are almost invisible. Despite ongoing attachment issues with the Cabot Trail has tendency for B part to morph into the Trail (which itself is suffering form a lack of speed control and a lack of grace notes.) It's annoying because this is a total relapse: I first played it at a session just weeks after starting to learn it.

Alick M McGregor. Much better now that I have moved from Session dots to proper dots. My problem is that whoever transcribed for the session clearly heard doublings as two notes, and wrote them as such, and I've been trying to add more grace notes, and this proliferation of notes has severely affected speed. Improving well.

The Irishman's Cudgel. Tendency to get stuck in a loop of B part, unable to recall how to get back to the A part. Those drops down to G don't always work very cleanly. Lack of grace notes. Generally improving.

The Braemar Gatheirng. Unhealthy attachment to dots, some stiffening of fingers, especially in the C part where I am having problems with D graces on the move from A to C.

Compliments to Roy A Chisholm. New patient, progressing well. Actually found myself humming the tune this morning for the first time and some of the repeating bars I already have by heart. A few more grace notes and a tad more speed wouldn't go amiss.

Eating an elephant

One of the many fatuous management phrases you come across these days is the one about change management and any hugely big task: how do you eat an elephant? The, not particularly amusing, answer is "a teaspoon at a time". The idea is that any really big job can be tackled if taken in small enough  pieces. Well, learning the pipes is certainly an elephant of a job, and sometimes I do feel as though I am proceeding at a teaspoon-sized rate.

But, really, what kind of an idiot thinks they can get through an entire elephant with a teaspoon? Fair enough if you don't mind which side of the end of the century you're finishing it, but personally I have a limited amount of time. How many five minute practices would it take me to hit the fabled 10,000 hours? I think I've mentioned this before. Even at 20 minutes a day it works out as the rest of  my life, assuming I reach the same old age attained by my great aunts and grandmother, and then some.

And I do wonder if actually there is value, apart from clocking up the hours, in playing for longer. Obviously playing for longer helps build up stamina. Clearly I will never have to play non stop for an hour, but I suppose it's the same as cars being able to go much faster than the legal limit. It means that when you are at the legal limit the car is well within its comfort zone, and if I can play for an hour non-stop, for instance, then 20 minutes or so should be a doddle, as should playing for 5 or 10 minutes at a time in chunks over a longer period.

Stamina aside I wonder if it helps to have time to go over, and over, and over a tune. To play something, or several somethings, else and then play the tune again and again. Does that speed up the learning process or is it better to play something and then leave it? Sometimes when I play in this way I feel I get better each time, but equally often, it seems, I get steadily worse, or improve to a certain point and then lose it totally. I remember from exam revision days we were told that you can only concentrate for 20 minutes at a time and should take a short break after that, and then breaks of increasing length interspersed with shorter periods of work, then begin again after a long break. Sometimes when I repeat a tune endlessly, break with another tune and go back to the first things have got better. And some times they have got worse, often quite a lot worse. I can literally got from almost having a tune and just fiddling about with the finer points of gracing to having not a clue how even to start the tune. (The fan has noted before that I am living proof of the fact that just because you can do a thing once doesn't mean you can do it again...)

Generally speaking I play until something else becomes pressing (dinner in the oven, the phone ringing), or I get tired, or I get really frustrated and fed up with playing . Sometimes I can work through frustration, discomfort, memory blocks and sheer idiocy, and sometimes I can't.

Whether it's a teaspoon, a ladle or a JCB, there is still an awful lot of elephant to be eaten.

(Can you believe - my 400th blog post!! No wonder I don't have enough time to play pipes!!)

These dry bones

(Tate Gallery http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bowler-the-doubt-can-these-dry-bones-live-n03592)

I suddenly felt better today. Not in that still-not-well-but-less-unwell-than-I-was way, but a real feeling well sort of way. I went to work, came home, popped in to the village, cooked dinner, wiped round the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher, wrote a letter...thought about piping. Got my pipes out.

I had a horrible worry that I would have forgotten how to play, forgotten all my tunes. So I decided I'd just try 10 minutes while dinner was in the oven, assuming it would go badly, but at least I'd be back in the saddle.

So I tried and..it was fine! It was good. It felt great to be playing again. I remembered some tunes, I played with dots, I played until I really did need to get dinner out of the oven. The Dragon appeared in its full glory, slow, with a swing, and a flurry of simple grace notes in the second part. Miss Girdle did her thing.

I really have to get back in to a regular habit. Hopeless to say daily during December with Xmas intervening and we'll be away for some of it, staying with folk who really don't care for pipes. Let's go for 4 times a week, starting this week, and taking Monday as the start. So three more times to play between now and Sunday. It's a start.