Author: Mac Stig

MacStig Returns: Though Not a Happy Bunny, He’s Kinda 2022 Hopeful

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There is little point registering the disappointment shared at the absence of the activity we are all fans of. So much water under the bridge, players sadly lost to the pandemic, lost to the bagpipe, and pages of time turned. I’ve played more board games, had overseas travel cancelled and looked at empty supermarket shelves more than I’d want to in a lifetime. The buzz of a ‘major’ venue, the…

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Band Season 2021 Looks a Forlorn Hope – Time for Leadership and New Thinking

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With announcement of new, severe lockdown regulations, the helmeted one reflects on the 2021 pipe band season prospects and we find him in serious mood…… I’m an optimist, a glass half full type, yet in less than a week into the New Year it was gone. Faster than two three-pace rolls, my hopes for the 2021 band competition season evaporated with the lengthening of what seems to have been the…

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No Risk, No Play as the Pipe Band Movement Faces an Existential Threat

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In the Old World we would all now be marching from Glasgow Green on to Cowal with soloists looking ahead to the late summer highlights of Oban, Inverness and the autumnal Glenfiddich with a bit of London thrown in. I’m sure that having read that your heart sank to know that ‘there is life Jim, but not as we knew it’, to mangle a phrase from Dr McCoy to his…

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MacStig Picks His Favourites from a Fine Selection of PP Lockdown Essays

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Ireland’s Seamus Russell gave us an insightful piece on the background to a painting held by the Black Raven Pipe Band [above]. The painting of the band at the off with banners flying certainly caught my eye, writes MacStig. Seamus deprecatingly said it wasn’t an entry for the Piping Press Arts Competition but I think it deserves an honourable mention and the story was engaging.  Betty Ann Muckle’s memory piece…

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MacStig Feels the Heat as he Contemplates the Entries for the PP Lockdown Writing Challenge

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Here at the but an’ ben I’ve been more or less self isolating since March. Can you believe it?, four months when I should have been charging about the country in the old jalopy reporting on Grade 2. We would have been well into the season by now with a few championships under the belt and excitement building for the Worlds. Instead, all we can do my friends is think…

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