Thirteen years ago we were going through another major crisis – the financial crash. Fortunes were lost; governments in a panic; western capitalism on the brink. At the time I penned a piece which suggested how we pipers could cope. I’ve updated it for our current ordeal…. The nights are darkly dim. Black forces rattle on the window pane. The insidious virus threatens to wrest the porridge spoon of prosperity…

Notice anything strange about this pic? Check out the bass drone. This was how the pipes were pictured in an auction catalogue by a Devon-based company. They were expected to go for £60 – £80 but sold for close on £6,000. The auction house and the seller clearly knew next to nothing about the national instrument yet the blurb read: ‘An important set of bagpipes have found their way home…

During my talk for the Bagpipe Association of Germany last week I emphasised how important it was to have an instrument that was easy to reed, easy to tune and steady. Have a think, dear reader, about your own pipe. Does it measure up? Do you spend more time actually getting your pipes going than practising or playing? If so you have a problem. If it does not answer all…

County Durham-based piper Neil Thain has kindly forwarded this article on a piping school held in the then Rhodesia in 1974 and conducted by William MacDonald, Inverness. Mr Thain has a collection of recordings of piobaireachd he made of Willie during the school and it is hope these can be made available via the Piobaireachd Society’s archive in due course. Fifty years ago Rhodesia was a small country in Southern…

I am trying hard to stay optimistic following RSPBA Chairman John Hughes’s statement on Piping Press last week. The realists among you will have crunched some dates. I think we can discount the first two majors at Paisley and Lurgan. That means the season will start, barring setbacks, at the Europeans at Inverness on June 26. That means that the all clear for full ‘aerosol practices’ would need to be…