Day 9

Scotland Weather... Raaaain!  Who knew!?

Wow, another fun and eventful day!  I got up at 4AM, not because of the alarm, but because of the giant Neanderthalic seagulls they have here!  Oh my gosh they are huge and mean looking!  Oh!  And they sound like that bear from "The Great Outdoors" starring John Candy.  Just after he shoots that bear for the second time, you can hear the sound here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJ-MpPBDug

Watch that, I'm serious that's about how they sound!  Now imagine waking up to that at 4AM after only getting 4 hours sleep!!!

So I got in the shower, shaved my skull and ironed my shirt.  After dressing and gathering my stuff I had about a half hour left to waste and practised some more.  I was having some issues still, the 4 hours didn't help, so once 6:30am rolled around we all got on the bus and headed back to Glasgow.  When we got there we were informed there would be about 200 bands in attendance today.  That is about 4 times as many as were in Maxville!  Many of them grade 1's and 2's.  It wasn't long before we were up to the gate ready to compete.  We marched on, and I almost blinked past the whole thing!  It was like time sped up and it was over before we knew it!  I wasn't too pleased with my performance, not just because I didn't have enough time to learn everything, but I made a stupid error on a 5 stroke single.  I tell my students that initial rolls and 5 stroke singles stand out more than anything else when playing.  If they aren't done right they sound like a huge audible flair to the judges.  I hit one so badly it bothered me for the rest of the set.  I messed up some of my marching by stopping too early, but overall the band did well and we placed 14th out of 52.  That isn't too bad.  14th is better than sucks and worse than qualifying so there is a saying in the pipe band world "win or lose, hit the booze".   Basically meaning who cares really, we do it for fun.

One thing I might add though, all the best pipe bands in the entire world were there.  Bands that practise 8-10 hours a day as a full time job, all competing for the same prize.  Even the North American champions didn't qualify today, so that shows you how much talent is present at the worlds.

During the competition it sort of stopped raining, until it stopped altogether about an hour later.  Wow, I didn't think Scotland even had a sun behind all those clouds!

After the competition I checked out some of the grade 1 bands, had a foot-long hot dog that wasn't really made from Canadian hotdog kind of meat, it was like a fluffy knockwurst and there were no condiments!  Seriously, Scottish people don't use normal mustard and don't ever have relish as a condiment!  However, they LOVE this stuff called "brown sauce".  I had a little girl about 8 almost knock me over trying to get to it!  She actually shoved me out of the way!  She ordered the same thing I did and poured brown sauce all over her food!  I tried it and it is exactly like eating HP sauce, only it isn't as peppery and is much sweeter.  They eat it on everything and it is served everywhere!

By the time I did all that my feet were killing me.  I had purchased a slightly used pair of Ghillie's because they were 1/25th the price of a new pair, only I didn't buy matching insoles to make them tolerable.  It was like walking on pavement in my bare feet all day.  So after checking in with the band to see if we had qualified I was almost relieved to find out we didn't have to play again!  Instead I we back to the bus to sit for about an hour.

Soon after I was joined by a few of my band-mates and they started singing some old Scottish folk songs.  I almost wet my kilt I was laughing so hard!  Then about an hour later the rest of the band joined us and we were off to Edinburgh again.

We made some plans to head to the golden mile but it started raining again and it was Saturday night drunkenfest in Scotland apparently, so we couldn't find a quiet place to eat.  Everything was packed!  We just ended up parting ways and I ended up going with a few of them for a burger.

I'm now completely exhausted full, sore, tired and relieved that I don't have to cram those drum scores into my skull anymore!  I wish I could have been a lot better, because like I said, I play for my own perfection, not for some guy with a clipboard, and I was not pleased to present something I wasn't prepared to present.

Maybe next year, but I doubt it.  It was a wonderful experience and have some great pictures.

So my darlings, I am going to head to bed now, I'm starting to shut down now.  We'll meet again tomorrow at this same time.

*hugs