Pipe band expert Alistair Aitken discusses the pipe band season so far… By Alistair Aitken OBE Since the British Pipe Band Championships at Paisley on 19 May there have been numerous local competitions throughout the UK as well as the UK Pipe Band Championships in Belfast. What has struck me in particular about the majority of local competitions is the reducing numbers of band entries. Contests which in the past have…
Our Dollar Academy correspondent has sent this….A remarkable 243 pipers and drummers gathered at Dollar Academy, Clackmannanshire, over the weekend to kick off the start of the school’s bicentenary year. With a parachute team arriving with the special bicentenary flag, which will fly over the Old Playfair Building this year, current band members and scores of former pupils (many in mature age ranges) got together to parade on the lawns…
We are now well into the week at the New England Pipe & Drum Academy. Small but perfectly formed, with friendship, wonderful food and hard study the unfailing mix for a successful week. Tonight Tommy (Johnston) and I are off to the Stuart Highlanders band for a workshop. This is the band which recently had a Grade 1 standing but who are now down in Grade 5. How things can…
Some say his Ulster fry is as dry as an Arabian sand shoe….others that his flashes of brilliance are in his hose tops…..yet more that his utterings and muttering are those of a havering Hector – and anything but heroic. But he is our firm family favourite and you just gotta love him…He is, after all, the one and only MacStig…… I think it was those 1970s heavy duty philosophers…
Some say his granny was a welder on the Titanic with a mouth to match….that he has inherited her vocals and can be heard howling down the slopes of Black Mountain every full moon……that to him using his loaf is launching lumps of Veda at Lough Neagh’s birdlife. All we know is he looks like this…. Raincoat, check, umbrella, check, sun cream, check, ferry ticket….there’s always something you leave on…
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