Piping Press

Happy Christmas to All Our Readers, Advertisers, and Contributors

It’s Christmas Eve here in the PP office and the staff are quietly going about their business. The Editor (that’s me) has generously granted an early finish today – 4.30pm instead of the usual 5. In addition he’s given each employee a gift-wrapped Christmas Pie with special instructions that it must not be opened before midnight.
It’s got them all wondering ‘why the secrecy’. Well there is none really; I just don’t want them getting over-excited at the 50p they’ll find inside, that’s all. Now don’t go off with any idea that I’m being miserable at what should be a jolly time of year. I have to conserve what little resources I have what with all this Brexit stuff doing the rounds and that wee Jimmy Krankie wumman talking of doing a Catalonia…..
I am really looking forward to opening the present the staff have for me. It’s sitting in the corner as I write. The rumour is that it is a load of back numbers of the Piping Times to remind me of the glory days. Well I hope not. I just don’t have the time for all that nostalgia stuff and besides, I’ve got a turkey to cook.
Well not exactly a turkey; not even a turkey really. Do you know that if you go to that freezer shop, Miceland, you can get slices of the stuff at a very reasonable price? All you have to do is warm it up in the microwave, lob on some Bisto and people think you’ve been up all night carving the real thing!
As for booze………. Now you all know that a keg of beer has a sell by date. What do the breweries do with the stuff they can’t sell? Down the plughole with it, that’s what. Not when MacScrooge is around they don’t. I’m in Glesga so it’s out with the 1988 Cortina estate and off to Wellpark, the Tennents place beneath that big graveyard on the hill. (The run off adds a special sweetness to the water supply.)


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Round the back at break time you’ll find a couple of guys in overalls puffing away. Two crisp fivers (I still have the paper ones) and seconds later the back of the old Ford is loaded down with enough dodgy hooch to see you through till Hogmanay.
Then its back to chez moi and the staff party. I was going to take them out for the Xmas Lunch this year but her indoors said that with a bit of imagination she could lay on a spread well better than the £30 a skull they were wanting at MacPhater Street.
The problem with these domestic jobs is you just can’t get rid of people when you want to. So my plan is this: after a couple of hours revelry I’ll put on a recording of that chap with the sore arm playing the pipes. That should clear the joint in no time and me and the good lady can settle down in front of the single bar electric fire and wait for noises down the chimney.
Now I know you’re all wondering what I’ve bought her. Well a nice Polish seamstress just opened a wee shop round the corner from us and my idea was this. Why don’t I take the old ’70s Muirhead’s kilt round and see if she can fashion a tartan skirt out of it? (Bet you wish you’d thought of that!) And you know what? It was ‘tak,tak,tak’ (yes, yes, yes in Warsaw) then tack, tack, tack, all the way.
Add that to the tangerines and the out of stock RW piobaireachd CDs I’ve loaded into her Xmas stocking and she’s in for a whale of time.
I hope you are too. Merry Christmas.


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