Rough directions now in hand, I took the turn off toward the Connel Bridge and followed the signs to Balcardine House Hotel. In the event I got there with about half an hour to spare. The manager showed me to a empty cottage behind the hotel where I could tune up without inflicting the attendant atonal cacophony upon the arriving guests; by twenty to two I was ready to go and pottered back round to the front of the hotel to await Kerri’s arrival.

And arrive she did in excellent style, deploying a queenly wave and a cheeky grin from the back seat of a puttering little Austin 7. Ruth, resplendent as a bridesmaid, helped facilitate a graceful exit from the diminutive car.

Katie snapped away as the bride got ready for her close up; bouquets were distributed; the car was parked off to the side; Kerri’s Dad came out to give her away, and I blew up the pipes’ bag in preparation for heading in, giving an accidental little squeak as I did so. “Sorry!”

Kerri laughed. We were finally formed up, line astern. “Are you ready?” I asked her. She was. I struck up the pipes (no double-toning! No squealing!) and started Highland Cathedral as we walked slowly through the main doors and into the hotel’s drawing room. I stepped off to one side at the back of the room as Kerri and her Dad walked up the aisle. I finished the tune and cut the pipes out cleanly.

Fuck yes. Part one taken care of.

It was a civil ceremony but one without the ponderously legal flavour that normally seems to prevail, and the registrar conducted it with good humour rather than leaden solemnity. Ruth and Katie read poems, with Katie improvising only a little at the end; the couple exchanged vows and rings and with that, they were married. And I had another tune to play.

I struck up again (no double-toning! No squealing!) as Kerri & Gordon came down the aisle and started Mairi’s Wedding, ironically playing it far better than I had done at my cousin Mairi’s own wedding a few years earlier. I led everyone through to the drawing room and continued to play as the guests followed the wedding party, surprising even myself by adding a couple of extra songs onto the end to keep going until everyone had arrived.

I finished up, got a little round of applause, and grinned. Part two done.

After an afternoon spent first wandering around the old hotel and then over at Kerri & Gordon’s house for some food, I begged off a little early so I could get ready for part three: playing the newly married couple into the evening’s ceilidh. This was always going to be the difficult bit. I’d suggested a song called Highland Wedding — a song that I’d never played before — on the strength of listening to a few recordings of it, and when I eventually clapped eyes on the sheet music, I was troubled. This is a difficult song. To put it in context of piping competitions, Highland Wedding is a Grade 1 tune, the highest level of difficulty, and to put my piping abilities in context, I’d never competed at any level whatsoever.

So, I practised it as often as I could, and I was moderately confident as I waited at the front of the Corran Halls for Kerri & Gordon to arrive.

When they’d arrived and we were ready to head in, I struck up the pipes to a barrage of squealing and double-toning. I stopped. I started again, to the same effect. I started a third time and they came in properly. I rolled my eyes to apologise, and led the three of us slowly through into the main hall.

It was excruciating.

I wasn’t bad as such, just messy, and I winced internally with each fluffed note or quavering tone. The guests were clapping along, evidently unperturbed by my erratic performance, but I was still desperately relieved when I reached the edge of the dance floor and could cut the song short at the end of the current part. The crowd clapped and whooped to greet Kerri & Gordon and I slunk over to the table where Jeff, Devon, Ally et al were sitting.

“Thank God that’s over,” I thought. “I need a drink,” I thought next, and proceeded to eat, drink and dance the night away. In spite of the 2.5-out-of-3 nature of my piping, it had been a great day. Congratulations, Kerri & Gordon!

The week before the wedding was a bit of a trial. I’d been playing the pipes a couple of times a week all through January and February, but I’d hit a bit of a plateau. In an attempt to finally reach a standard appropriate to playing at the most important day of someone’s life, I booked six consecutive sessions at Banana Row for this final week. Each night (and twice on Thursday), I traipsed along to the studio to play the pipes until my lips turned to rubber and I could blow no more. For the uninitiated, this is a bit like having a balloon stuck inside your mouth and inflated until your cheeks are so taut you could shine a torch through them.

After each night’s practice I would walk tensely home, shifting my pipe case from hand to hand as my right arm stiffened up with the weight and the cold, while my free hand silently played its particular half of Highland Wedding over and over again. I’d collapse on the couch, throw the ball around for Maisie, blether to Ash, and then find it impossible to get to sleep because my mind was still uncontrollably vaulting through this tune or that one.

For no particularly good reason, then, I found myself watching Wallander on iPlayer almost every night, trying to zone out a bit so I could get some sleep. It should be crap: Kenneth Branagh seems to have patterned Kurt Wallander after Brian from Spaced, all mumbles and awkwardness; the script is stilted and clipped, as if the actors are reciting the subtitles to the Swedish version, and it’s riddled with general cognitive dissonance like ‘Polis’ cars (I mean, is it set in Glasgow?) and characters reading Swedish postcards out loud in English. Yet despite all of this, it’s weirdly compelling. Maybe my critical defences were down, taken up with worrying about bagpipe tuning and song structures, but I was hooked: each night I watched Kenneth Branagh gloomily drive a Volvo through beatific Swedish landscapes until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

Which is, let’s face it, a bit weird.

I drove the four of us over to Oban in a rented Ford Focus on the Friday afternoon, through increasingly beautiful scenery. We arrived in town in time for dinner in a portside pub (‘waterfront’ seems too genteel a term for a situation which can be more accurately described as ‘next to the ferry terminal’), and our group gradually accreted more and more of the wedding guests as the night went on. We decanted decamped to another pub nearby called Auley’s.

Auley’s boasts of “the warmth and special welcome of a real Scottish pub”. Perhaps I’m being churlish, but normally I consider surly bar staff and a jukebox stocked with happy hardcore to be mutually exclusive to offering a “warm and special welcome”. Then again, someone told me later that out Auley’s is a favourite of Oban’s contingent of Rangers supporters, so perhaps by “the warm and special welcome of a real Scottish pub” they mean “a Glasgow kiss”.

Hell, I don’t know. I do know that they sold us beer and I got shitfaced as a result, so I can’t really judge too harshly. We commandeered the jukebox after its under-age guardians had departed and queued up round after round of Led Zeppelin and the like. The night took on a rosier tint.

We were turfed out at closing time, and back at the hotel I fell into a deeply unsatisfactory sleep.

O God, I thought as my phone rang. What time is it?

It was the morning of the wedding day, it was 9am, and Jeff was calling to ask if I wanted to join everyone else for breakfast. I declined. I did not want to join them for breakfast, because I was unsure that I’d be able to keep breakfast down. I went back to sleep, or at least tried to.

The room phone rang a short time later and down it a receptionist bellowed at me at entirely unnecessary volume, asking would I mind moving my car? It is blocking someone else in. Frankly, I did mind. But I did it anyway, pulling on last night’s clothes to stagger downstairs past reception with matted hair and corrosive breath, edged the car forward six feet out of the parking bay and then reversed back in again. I climbed heavily back to the room and got back into bed.

My mobile then rang again. This time it was my Mum in the lobby downstairs, coincidentally at the hotel to meet some other wedding guests. She asked if I was up and about, and did I want to go to breakfast? I still did not. I apologised, hung up and buried my head under the pillow.

Just as I’d managed to doze off again, my mobile’s alarm went off. It was 10am. I snoozed it and hid under the pillow.

My phone beeped a few minutes later, signalling the arrival of some spam text or other. I silenced it and groaned in frustration but eventually threw in the towel, getting up when my phone’s snoozed alarm sounded scant seconds later to finally goad me out of bed. I was supposed to be at the wedding by 1pm so I could tune up and be ready for the wedding party to arrive at 2pm, but I had two and a half hours in hand to get ready. I showered, shaved, ironed my shirt, got dressed, fitted a new cover and cords to the pipes, dropped my phone into my jacket pocket and looked at my watch: 1pm.

Shit.

(To be continued.)

* Having said that, who am I to say it isn’t prison slang? Perhaps burglars and benefit fraudsters in the Bar-L find themselves being “piped up the aisle” with alarming regularity.

Callander isn’t exactly at a rarefied Highland latitude, but the towns thin out and the midge clouds thicken up remarkably quickly as Glasgow recedes in the mirrors, and the hotel had the feeling of a country retreat rather than one on the main street of an otherwise busy little town. Waxy & Phil were talking with a knot of beaming guests, so we waved hello and wandered inside for a drink. The hotel manager gathered us up to watch the first dance as we chatted with the Captain in the library and we filed through to the function room.

The next couple of hours shot by until with alarming rapidity we found ourselves in front of the assembled guests. “Waxy, I hope we don’t ruin your wedding,” Charlie said, or words to that effect. “We’re Coba Fynn. Waxy asked us to play—” (Charlie had explained some time previously to Waxy & Phil that Coba Fynn would of course be playing at their wedding) “—so we hope you enjoy yourselves.” He turned to us. “Let’s go.”

And so we did.

It was tremendii. CF original Glasgow Girl got the guests onto the dance floor and some choice covers kept them there, Waxy’s dad joining us on harmonica and wailing vocals for Hoochie-Coochie Man. We played two wedding requests: The Lighthouse Song for Waxy, the song practically playing itself through our intruments; and Phil’s favourite Smoke on the Water. The demanded encore of Crossroads was played at a blistering pace with blistering hands, and when we finished the set after forty-five short minutes I felt a twinge of guilty triumph at having stolen the ceilidh band’s thunder.

We took paper plates of buffet pies and spring rolls outside to cool down for a bit. Doug and I analysed the night’s performance in a chin-stroking fashion.

“Nice work there on the drums, Doug. Although I couldn’t hear myself very well—I thought maybe the bass was a bit low.”

“Really? I could hear you fine. I could feel you in my bones.”

“So long as it was your bones, and not your boner.”

“Obviously not, man. But I will say that if there was to be a sexual connection between any two members of the band…”

“…then it’s going to be the rhythm section, right? That’s what I like to hear.”

Ash laughed at us.

“Oh, it’s cool; we’re just being homoironic.”†

A fantastic night, and a fantastic wedding. Congratulations, Waxy & Phil!

* A month or so back we were pressed into service for Charlie’s boss’ retiral do at Oran Mor in the west end of Glasgow. We set up in the Auditorium under Alasdair Grey’s spectacular mural, soundchecked in the abbreviated time available and then got out of the way as the first guests filed in. Quite firmly uninvited to the meal itself, Doug, Davis and I ate mixed pakora at Charlie’s kitchen table while the dinner guests gorged themselves on wild salmon, truffled asparagus and caviar washed down by 18-year-old single malts and the finest cognac. (Probably, anyway. My speculation may be informed by a touch of jealousy.) We arrived bang on time for our set, waited through an hour of overrunning, back-slapping speeches and were hustled off the stage after only twenty minutes as the function staff started cleaning up at the stroke of 11.30pm.

** At Bannerman’s; intimate is the term, I think, meaning “comprised only of the band’s friends and immediate family.”

† Gauche, non-PC or just lame? I can’t decide.

A few hours earlier (and, falling victim to the ridiculous British Summer Time, an hour early), I met up with Charlie, Davis/d(e) and Penny at Rab Ha’s, and somewhat thrown by my unintentionally prompt arrival, sank a few pints until we could reasonably head along to the concert. We arrived, obtained our shiny ‘AFTERSHOW’ passes and were eventually let in by the least suspicious security guard, identified only by a serial number on his shirt. Thank you, THX1138—or whatever your human name is.

It was a pleasant evening. Tim furnished us each with a beer from the band’s rider, chatting enthusiastically with us about our recent demo and earnestly asking us each to sign it. Penny stood in admirably for Doug, drawing a picture of a penis on it. THX1138 popped his head round the door, saying “Ten minutes guys,” so we took our leave, grabbed another pint from the porta-bar at the side of the hall and took up station with all the old farts at the back to watch the show.

Ash have decreased in size to be a three-piece band since I last heard anything about them (when Ruth took some photos for them at a gig of theirs in Dundee), and proceeded to rock their way through a fairly stripped-down set. Afterwards, we wobbled backstage again, helped ourselves to a few more Red Stripes and congratulated them heartily. I would have bestowed hearty congratulations on anybody by that point, but fortunately they were richly deserved. I took a circuitous taxi home, fell into an oblivious, snoring sleep and was late for work the next day. Rock and roll, people. That’s what it’s all about.

* * *

The week trundled by unexceptionally, with a couple of honourable exceptions: watching Heather Mills’ rambling excoriation of the press with Jeff & Dev on Wednesday night, we descended into an ill-informed and hence extremely entertaining bout of scoffing, culminating in Devon’s announcement: “Ha! She doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Ouch. Is it libel if it’s true?

Other than that, Ash and I drove over to Edinburgh again at the weekend for Jez & Serena’s engagement party. There were glorious arrays of cake, so Neil and I were happy as abstinent and driver respectively; there was free flowing champagne, so everyone else was happy, and there were babies and pregnant mothers on hand to make us all smile apprehensively at our respective better halves. Congratulations, guys—I think you’re going to be very happy together!

So it came to pass that on the day of the wedding, where I was required to don the proud national garb of my country and rouse the wedding guests to attention with the skirl of the bagpipes, I was prone on the couch watching Empire Strikes Back and trying very hard not to barf. In our collective defence (Brian was perceptibly wan-looking as well), we’d had a very light dinner of pizza and beer, with a dessert of beer and some beer as a digestif. In hindsight perhaps a little Cointreau instead would have sorted us out.

Fortunately an excellent breakfast of freshly-laid eggs (what else?) and Weet-bix (the vowelly challenged antipodean version of Weetabix ideal for the bowelly challenged) raised me from my torpor once my stomach had stopped churning. The photographer arrived around 1 pm to take some ‘candid’ shots of the Chris and his groomsmen getting done up in their kilts – no, not that candid – and by 3 we’d arrived at the Botanic Gardens to set up the red carpet, chairs and so on.

Neil, Davis/d(e) and Jenna wandered away from the body of the open-air kirk to help me tune the pipe drones before Leyla arrived, and so I played through a few tunes to warm them up. As I was finishing up Neil pointed through the trees to another wedding that I’d accidentally subjected to an atonal aural battering. We surreptitiously slunk back to our own wedding and I judged the pipes to be as tuned as was necessary.

Almost immediately, Leyla turned arrived with her Dad and I had to stop worrying about playing and get on with just doing it. Somehow it all more or less came together: I got to the end of the aisle just as the tune ended and I stopped without the bag deflating too slowly (in which case it tends to bray like a stricken donkey). I took my place alongside the rest of the kilted contingent and breathed a relieved sigh.

The ceremony was entertaining as well as solemn, and there was a palpable joy to the proceedings – despite the legalese involved in a civil ceremony, it was less grave than a church wedding and in the leafy surroundings of the gardens felt much more celebratory. As the register was signed, I retired to a discreet distance – as discreet as possible with the pipes, anyway – and played a few more tunes. Davis/d(e) wandered over as things were wrapping up and looked bemused; I took this to be the sign to finish up and did so.

We took to the river on the Kookaburra Queen for the reception and to admire fabulous Brisvegas as it slid majestically in the gathering twilight. There were speeches, there was eating, drinking, mingling and even a very little dancing from your host. Anyway, I’ve been writing this entry for four days and three continents, so I’m going to call it a day now and post this sucker. Next up: rock and roll, baby – we hit Memphis.

Fortunately the wedding wasn’t until 3pm and I was just about intact by then. We got there by the skin of our teeth (taxi driver: “Oh, you meant 1 pm“; waitress at lunch: “Can I re-take your order for the third time?”) and I suspect that the traditional sleepy English hamlet pace of life doesn’t scale well to an influx of us city folks.

The church was packed for the ceremony, and ceremony there was in spades. Church of Scotland weddings seems to consist of vows, rings and confetti all compressed into about twenty minutes but this one was sufficiently more complicated that I began to wonder which branch of Christianity was being celebrated. On account of the lack of A) Latin, B) glossolia and C) polygamy I eventually decided it must be Church of England, but only just. Perhaps the priest had defected from the Catholic Church – a loose canon, so to speak.

Anyway, the ceremony went like clockwork and I was amazed by how happy and composed Dom and Alice seemed. Seeing them afterwards, and notwithstanding the fact that I’d just witnessed their marriage, I was struck by the feeling that they were genuinely meant to be married to each other. They’re going to be a fantastic (married) couple!

The reception was on the village green and was a genial affair. The speeches were great, particularly Alice’s Dad’s flipchart deconstruction of his daughter as property up for auction (you had to be there). I ate instead of drank myself into a stupor, though not for want of trying the latter, and stumbled to bed about 1 am after what really had been an excellent night**.

On Sunday, miraculously hangover-free, we congregated at Dom’s Dad’s house for some homemade pizza and cake before the journey back and said goodbye to the newlyweds. We dropped Martin off in Renfrew and drove back along the M8 just in time for me to meet Ash and Scott at the Pear Tree. Six pints of posh European lager turned my brain to mush and I was very, very glad to collapse into bed around 2 am.

I was considerably less glad to arrive twenty minutes late to Monday’s 10 am meeting, exuding stale beer through my sweat glands.

P.S. Ruth is back from Oz, and in fine form. It’s good to have her back!

* I must plug the Trøll again – it breezes on past 205,000 miles with only a new exhaust and tyres on its account and continues to pretend that it’s a bit sporty into the bargain. I had a hole in the still-original exhaust downpipe patched up in the nick of time on Friday morning and the note is back to its throaty best. I mentioned this to the garage owner as a mechanic backed the car off the ramp, and speculated that perhaps it might have an unusual firing order because of its half-a-V8 origins.
“Naw,” he said. “Naw, it disnae.”
So are myths dispelled and fanciful notions brought to earth.

** Here are some photos of the wedding:

• Dan
• Kris
• Michelle
• Ro