Postcards From Across the Pond

It started back in March, when a friend of mine asked if I would play the bagpipes at her Burns Night dinner in 2022. I thought it would be a hoot, so I said I would.

Yeah, I play the bagpipes. Sorta.

I took them up in June 2000, and by the time I moved to Britain in 2002, I was doing fairly well. I even joined a pipe band for a while. It helped me stretch, but it soon became apparent that I was out of my depth. Still, the fact was, I could play a variety of tunes, and I could play for extended periods without getting tired.

Back in 2002, at least.

The years that followed saw my pipes becoming more and more neglected. I did take them out now and again, tune them up and annoy the neighbours with a few tortured tunes, but I didn’t do anything that resembled organized practice. To be fair, that would have been difficult in a small flat with not-so-great soundproofing. I like bagpipe music, but a lot of my neighbours don’t.

And so, when my friend asked me to play, I figured I’d need to do a bit of brushing up. I worked on the practice chanter for a few months (you bagpipers will know what I am talking about), and in August, when I felt ready to face the actual pipes, I took them out of the case, assembled and tuned them. And found I couldn’t play a note.

This was perplexing, disappointing and extremely unsettling.

Being able to play the bagpipes was one of my defining traits. If I could no longer play, did that signify the start of me doing more and more things for the last time, and fewer and fewer things for the first time. Were the bagpipes—or, more to the point, my inability to play them—my inevitable introduction to Old Age?

I mulled this over for a few days, then decided I had justification for a reprieve: The pipes were over 20 years old, had spent most of their life in the case, and had never been maintained. All they needed, I reasoned, was a tune-up. Then I would certainly be able to play them again.

This initiated a protracted search for a bagpipe maintenance emporium, which led to a store in Brighton that said they could help me. They are a reputable business that has been operating for a long time, so I will not mention their name. I’m sure they are very good, but their claim about bagpipe-knowledge proved—to be kind—a little optimistic.

I brought the pipes to them in September. While there, I asked about getting a set of pipes that were like the Great Highland pipes, only smaller, and a bit quieter. I thought this might make practicing less onerous and keep me from being served with a noise abatement order. But the guy assured me that such a thing did not exist.

Undaunted, I went home and searched the web. Turns out, there is such a thing, and a shop in Edinburgh had some for sale. After paying them (undisclosed amount of cash), I became the owner of a set of Border, or Lowland, Pipes.

They are not a traditional set—which uses a bellows under your right arm to pump up the bag under your left arm—and instead have a blowpipe so they can be played just like the Highland pipes, only in a smaller room and with less noise.

This put my Old-Age issue on hold for two months, until I finally got my Highland pipes back.

Long story short, I paid (undisclosed sum of cash, but rest assured, it was a lot) for them to tune them up and they came back in worse shape than they were when I gave them to them.

Naturally, I panicked. With few options, I turned to the Edinburgh shop, explained my problem and begged them to help me. Incredibly, they said they could. So, I sent the pipes, they turned them around in a single day, and charged me only £22 (and £10 of that was postage).

They also sent a video of the shop owner playing my pipes in a way I could never hope to achieve, but at least it proved they were now as good as new. I would—I was certain—finally be able to play them again.

Days later, the pipes arrived. I set them up, and couldn’t play a note.

I was gutted.

There was nothing left to blame. It was all down to me. Old Age had thrown its mantel over me, and I was doomed to tread that downhill path, jettisoning every experience, every skill, every desire, until I became an empty husk.

(Actually, there are plenty of things I don’t do any longer that I used to enjoy: SCUBA diving, Irish Step Dance, Stand-up Comedy, drinking until 4AM…I’m not sure why not playing the pipes caused such existential angst, but there you go.)

I moped about for a few days, then thought, “Fuck that!”

I now have my pipes—both sets—out where I can get at them easily. Every day, I pick them up and play them as much as I can, which isn’t a lot. However, when I first started, I could hardly get a note out, whereas now—after just a little more than a week—I can play (almost) a whole song.

With more than a month to go before Burns Night, I’m confident I will be ready to do at least a halfway decent job of piping in the haggis.

How far back this pushed the Old-Age Boogie Man, or how much it annoys my neighbours, I can’t say. There isn’t a lot I can do about Old Age, but I did buy my upstairs neighbour a box of chocolates by way of apology.