Apparently the photographer, Dr Norman “The Adder King” Morrison, Shawbost, Lewis, took these photos over a period of years with a view to record island life. It’s great that he did. Photos from that time, especially in places like the Outer Hebrides, are rare indeed.

I’ve been searching myself for nineteenth century photos of MacMillan and MacRury Uist people – with zero success. So, lucky are the progeny of Catherine Maclennan, pictured here, who have a photo of their ancestor.

But really; I suggest not an entirely flattering shot of Catherine. I’d suspect she’d untag this pic had facebook been around at the time and she was riding the big time-wasting pony that it is.

Bless her heart.

M.

M.

[Throws head back as exiting elevator], “Well, its not our fault she upped and moved to France.”

C’est vrai.

M.

Colin was quick to nix the texting. I was incredulous ["ooooh, incredulous!"]. And didn’t I experience the same damned thing just the other day while doing my best to pass on what I was able during my own lesson.

I don’t really think young piping people – or maybe just young people – think too much about it. There’s an obsession to check the phone, to respond, to make sure they know their friends know they’re alive. But when it comes to the phone thing, do what you like, wear your thumbs red raw, just don’t do it during a piping lesson. It’s a sure-fire strategy if you’re looking to get fired.

Be in the moment. The moment is what’s real.

M.

Anyway, he’s put an item up this evening that is quite amazing, at least to me. Up for auction is a genuine miner’s canary cage, used for centuries by miners (until 1986 in the UK) to enable early detection of lethal gases. It wouldn’t be much of a life for the poor little yellow bird but a useful life in the extreme. My dad’s offering is nineteenth century vintage and there for the taking. It’s most interesting to me, I think, because it represents a really common saying: “like a canary in a coal mine“. And here we have that old expression fairly spring to flight.

To keep in line with usual blog blab I think I really have to tie this to a piping thingie. So, “a canary in a coal mine”: are there things in the piping and pipe band game that might be likened to canaries in coal mines? Early warnings?

Random, off the top of my big square head:

- Games and competitions disappearing
- A reduction in the number of bands – everywhere (especially in the higher grades)
- Continually low attendance at the annual general meetings of governing organizations – everywhere
- Pipe bands competing with rubber drum pad “covers”

I’m sure there are others. You’ll have your own thoughts, I know.

M.

And what follows is pretty much how the conversation went; and get ready for a surprise ending …

“About a half hour a day”, he said. I told him that wasn’t enough. He needed to bump that up to at least an hour.

He then said, “Well I’ve always been good at regular practice – expect for a three month time last year.”

“What do you mean?”, I ask.

“Well, I broke my neck and couldn’t play.”

Gulp.

Now this kid is the picture of teenage health – no sign of any illness, let alone a broken neck.

He then proceeds to tell me in the most nonchalant way the story of his broken neck. It went something like this:

“Me and my friends were playing around on a trampoline at a summer party in Lynden. I was jumping on the trampoline and fell; my ex-girlfriend was jumping, too, except she landed on me. I could hear my neck snap. I felt weird and knew something was really wrong.”

And here is the kicker:

“The first thing that went through my head was, ‘will I play the pipes again?’ – the second was, ‘will I be able to walk?’”

Now isn’t that something? To walk or to pipe? Breaking your neck must stand as the ultimate acid test for true love of the pipes.

His story has stuck with me. Like most stories and like most things that happen to others we know, they, one way or another, find a way to reflect on us – and we, of course, reflect: “how would I handle that?”, “what would I do?”, “could that happen to me?”. And so it goes. I’ve thought about his story more than once since his telling – and I told him so yesterday at his lesson – at the same time he gave me permission to pass along to you.

So there you have it; take from it what you will.

M.

I bet my birl you will be in a better place in the long run for the decision to restrain.

M.

Have you ever noticed on flights to or from Scotland there is almost always one guy in a kilt? On the way to Glasgow there was a devoted elderly kiltie walking the floor at the departure gate, his MacLean of Duart kilt and “Jacobite” shirt ready for old country action. Going home? A first time dream visit to his ancestral homeland? I don’t know. But there he was all set for bare-legs-on-leather across the pond.

A week later, return flight: same thing – different guy but still a “kilt”. I use quotation marks as he wore (and as of this moment he still does – thankfully) a £50 High Street special: two yards of Sialkot’s best; this time a purple number. With toque, dark (purple) sunglasses and Doc Martens he had NQR rubber-stamped all over his beefy pre-middle-aged face. I’m not saying a person’s Not Quite Right if they lean to be-kilted travel. I’m just, well, saying.

As it turned out, KiltBoy was, indeedy, Not Quite Right. My seat happened to be near the front this rare time and I noted KB was the last – the last – to board. He sat down in the row in front of me – not directly in front of me, but a few seats over.

About 15 minutes after take-off the woman two seats over from me let’s rip a scream of bombardic proportions, followed up with a “THAT MAN JUST FUCKING THREW UP ALL OVER ME!” (Read in your best Maryhill). So KB was definitely NQR.

I’m guessing he made the effort to turn his rear to his rear for one reason only. Nothing against the lady (well, a little chunder maybe) but he must’ve thought he had to save his kilt and rabbitty sporran from a dose of breakfast revisited.

And do you know what he said to the poor lady after his warm unasked-for greeting? “You don’t have to make such a big deal about it”. Nice.

Lucky for all, the plane had spare seats and people were moved to drier ground.

OK. Maybe I am saying it: kilts and flying: just NQR.

M.

Here’s the work of Italian-American artist, Cyrus Cuneo (1879 -1916). This image represents the famous Sir George Simpson, the Dingwall-born (Scotland) governor of what was once known in Canada as Rupert’s Land, an unbelievably massive expanse that surrounded Hudson’s Bay.

George Simpson was the formidable head of the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of the oldest companies in the world and today one of Canada’s biggest department stores (they’re not paying me to say it, but it is a good store). He was apparently an eccentric type, loved the pipes, and so would have them, and a piper, close at hand on his travels – including those in the deep Canadian wilderness [why is it eccentrics are so often the go-to bagpipe lovers of the world?].

Like pipers in some parts of the world – like, say, Cape Breton – who prefer to play sitting down (surely an open invitation to hemorrhoids, by the way), I can’t imagine much fine technique, tuning and rhythm happening while playing pipes in a canoe.

But we’ll see. I hope to report back sometime over the coming warmer months – at least sometime after the spring thaw. Who knows? Maybe the whole canoe experience will prove to be the optimum bagpipe playing place.

Funny how people from the modestly-sized Dingwall can sometimes be the most interesting.

M.

In no particular order:

1. The heat that oppressed every one of us there at this year’s Glengarry Highland Games in Maxville, Ontario. I don’t remember playing bagpipes in hotter conditions. I also don’t remember seeing competitors pass out and led – shaking, as in shock – to St John’s Ambulance first aid tents. The whole day was awful; unpleasant in the extreme. If weather continues to change we’ll (quite rightly) see outdoor competitions in the Northern Hemisphere shift to September and October. Oh, and a bit sadistic for organizers to ask open competitors play their tunes twice-through.

2. Murray Henderson‘s last competitive performance. This moment counts as two, really. Thanks to live streaming of this year’s Glenfiddich, I got to catch the big contest in Italy – in fact, in the lounge of a Tuscan agri-tourismo lounge bar – with Jenny Hazzard, Colin MacLellan , Duilio Vigliotti and Bob Worrall – that would be the first part. Surreal. And so great to see Murray play so well and cap a magnificent career in his vintage redoubtable style – and that’s the second. Still surprised the assembly didn’t see their way to rising to their feet at the end of his last tune.

3. The emotional performance by the Spirit of Scotland band of Donald MacLeod’s pibroch, “Caber Feidh gu Brath”. The band played (along with the soon-to-be-defunct, Lothian & Borders Police Pipe Band) Saturday, January 28, at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. With Alasdair Gillies’ old comrade, Niall Matheson, performing the urlar on his own, the band joined in and played through to the crunluath. Really moving stuff brilliantly played. A pitch-perfect tribute to the late Maestro, Alasdair Gillies.

4. The first low A sounded by the Toronto Police Pipe Band at the World Pipe Band Championships. It sounded good and it felt right:

I am tired and I am alone,
(Tha mi sgìth ‘s mi leam fhìn,)
Playing pipe band medleys that start with E
After three pace rolls…

5. Cracking open the printer’s proof of “Damned Suites and Other Music”: my sixth book of music was a long, difficult project that was worth it in the end. Oh, and the proof copy was right.

6. Having the chance to listen first-hand (as a judge) to Dylan Whittemore’s winning pibroch, “MacFarlane’s Gathering” at this year’s George Sherriff Memorial amateur piping competition in Hamilton, Ontario: a young fellow with boat loads of potential. He’s a source of pride, no doubt, for his teacher, Ed Neigh.

7. Another virtual Glenfiddich moment: seeing my old L&B alumnus pal, Iain Speirs, win the Glenfiddich. What a player – and an even better fellow. I remember as a guy in my early twenties going along to the Speirs family’s Edinburgh home (coat-tailing with Bill and Lillian Livingstone) to visit with Tam and Carol. Iain was but a young stripling (as James Campbell, Kilberry, might’ve said) and played an outstanding command performance of “Lament for Mary MacLeod”.

8. Reading the band’s score sheets from the 2012 World Pipe Band Championships. They loved us, they hated us – but heavy on the later. “I can’t hear the music for the harmonies!”. I felt bad for the band but good for the future of pipe band music development. I mean, really, what does harmony have to do with music?

9. Here’s an especially wank moment: Colin Clansey playing one of his winning selections at The pipes|drums Livingstone contest. Colin played my tune, “The Whitby Runaround” brilliantly. And there was Bill Livingstone in the front row (the “Whitby” of the runaround) and me, in the back – the guy at the back end of the runaround.

10. The Vogue girl walking along Bloor Street in Toronto in July in six-inch heels, in seriously short skirt all the while holding a package of hot dog buns – buns swinging in step (as they should).

11. Young Kyle Coughlin winning his first professional solo competition at Maxville: he won the jigs on his first professional attempt – and – ready for the bald-faced promo: with “Cross-border Side-step” … a tune that’s been good to me, too.

12. Reconnecting Reay Mackay and Willie Morrison at the George Sherriff Memorial competition. When I was a kid a stand-out memory was hearing Reay and Willie, after the Scottish World Festival Tattoo, jig and reel pipe duel in the Sergeant’s Mess of the 48th Highlanders. I recall like yesterday the tunes, especially Willie’s original rendition of “The Cameronian Rant” jig. They hadn’t seen each other since that time. A circle of sorts for me.

So, random memories, for sure. Just mine.

I wish you all the best for the best New Year ever!

M.