After a week of spectacular summer weather it was odds-on that rain would arrive just in time for the Scottish Pipe Band Championships now underway at Levengrove Park, Dumbarton. Weather experts at the UK Met Office are predicating heavy downpours later in the day and have issued the following ‘yellow’ warning: But pipe bands are a hardly lot and despite the exposed nature of today’s competition field, right on the…

Heartening attendance figures at Lochearnhead Games last Saturday. Twenty-one in the light music and 19 in the ceol mor. It must have been just like old times. Well done to all concerned. You are proving that a traditional games, with none of this grading carry-on, is still an attractive proposition for competitors. There is something viscerally satisfying at play here. Head off to a handsome Highland village, get out your…

By The Editor A new exhibition of considerable interest to pipers has opened in Edinburgh. ‘Wild & Majestic – Romantic Visions of Scotland’ debunks the myth that our tartan, our music, our kilts are all products of overblown post Jacobite and Victorian emotion. These thriving traditions did exist in the Highlands well before the time of Sir Walter Scott and James MacPherson and were nationalised and internationalised by these writers….

He loves telling the old Chick Murray joke, but the timing, like his playing is never great…..Tour guide: ‘If you look over there you’ll see Dumbarton Rock’….Passenger: ‘Funny, I’ve been staring at it for half an hour and it hasn’t moved.’ Yes, stick to your usual beat MacStig, that’s the superb coverage we all enjoy from your perspicacious pen……..forensic, friendly foresight, fierce folios of frippery, a fandangoed feast of fishy…

Many congratulations and best wishes to James Warnock the pioneer chanter and reed maker who last week celebrated his 100th birthday. Better known to all as Jim, he was born into a farming family on the outskirts of Cookstown, County Tyrone, on 18th July 1919. Like his brothers he followed his father into farming as well as sharing his interest in piping by joining Tullylagan Pipe Band. In the 1930s, under Pipe Major…