The Age of Miracles

Yesterday I sat down and played. The A chanter was already in place, so that’s what I began with. I was slightly worried that I’d have the usual switching issues as it’s been well over a week – probably longer – since I last played in A. Amazingly, my hands adjusted at once and I had no problem at all with positioning fingers. I had a tad too much pressure in the bag, and a slight tendency to whack the bellows to keep that pressure up, but nothing that worried me too much. After half an hour or so I switched across to D….and again, no problems at all. My fingers found where they were meant to be, the pressure as easier, and off we went.

I had more of a problem with tunes. I hadn’t got any dots out so I played through the usual suspects. I then tried to play some of those tunes I’ve been playing from dots on an off for a while. Murray’s Farewell was a bit sticky at the end of the first section of the A part and the B was hit and miss. Listening to Tryst recently I don’t think I’ve got the timing quite right and I need to check it over.

I managed two bars of Gaelic Club but couldn’t bring to mind a single note of Portree, Captain Grant, Highland Lassie, Balmacara, Falls, or Dargai. I managed one part (but which?) of Pibroch of Donal Dhu, which I play from time to time but never with any serious intent to add it to my repertoire. I managed to dredge up Terebus although I think I missed a variant on the B part. No joy at all with Castle Dangerous and only intermittent luck with the Dragon. I did manage Captain. Now I’m not playing it with the Cabot Trail I haven’t played it in a while, but it was still there, in one piece.

I didn’t try particularly hard with any of these. I thought of the name of a tune, I tried to play. If I got half a phrase I had another run at it, but quickly moved on if I got stuck. Even so, some of these are tunes I definitely “knew” at one stage.  I seem to have unlearned them very quickly.

I think I need to pick one tune and work on it to bring it up to scratch, abandoning the others for now, then move on to the next. Or maybe work on Grant, Murray and Dragon as a set (as played on Tryst).  I think the other option would be just to abandon the whole lot and find some others to work on, but I’ll start with Plan A and see how it goes.

I've not yet noted that it's a year since I collected my little velvet Monkey, fell in love. and, I think, became a better piper.