Adventures in Judging Piping & Drumming (and a photo)

Aside from getting a front row seat to good music, the best part about travelling around the place judging pipers and drummers is the people you meet. At its heart a good pipe band is a social club and that goes, too, for the judging game. While judges in most places are compensated for expenses and receive a fee, most don’t sit in judgement for the money. Travelling to games usually involves some degree of tedium – a little traffic here, a crabby border agent there. Its new friends made and old friendships renewed that is the best part of judging (that and the always five star accommodation, of course).
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A Banff Huff

It doesn’t matter if its parliament, a corporate board room, a church group or a pipe band, there’s at least one thing people have in common when they gather (oh, to gather): the huff. Huff is a funny sort of word. One syllable. It’s like one of those words that sounds like what it is – onomatopoeia. So huff, a mood of sulking anger, resentment.
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A Line Up of Knees

I was talking to John Walsh the other evening and learned – among other things – he had one brand new knee. It was last week in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia when his plastic patella was, er, planted. Like so many procedures of this kind there’s no shortage of discomfort in recovery.
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“Let me take your picture”

Here’s a classic example of one of those forced picture-taking moments (FPTMs). It’s not often anything good comes of it (see exhibit A below). Here, with my eldest sister, Jane (Campbell) is the 17 year-old me in my 48th Highlanders of Canada number ones (minus feather bonnet but still, with impressive head of hair, I must say … in those days it was always said to the barber, “just thin it out”).
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Happy New Year – oink!

Posting a photo or graphics of any kind is almost always the easiest way to fire up a blog. So here are a few to help wish one and all a Happy New Year.
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Happy Canada Day – 5 Random Facts

Today’s the day. And since we’re here, five random facts about Canada – it’s always five (it’s a blog):
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Halfway through 2016 and Reflecting

I think it’s the early sunrise and especially bright eye-squinting mornings, just a little south of the 49th parallel, that reminded me today that we’re almost at the halfway point of 2016. Whoosh! That’s how time goes – and that’s how time flies. And so, as not to forget, and maybe omit something from what will surely turn out to be a mighty and interesting late-December 2016 summary, I thought I’d jot down a few personal highlights of the year that’s been so far. Not for you, of course, but for me! Me. Me. Me.

When thinking, in processing thoughts, just what makes a person think – of anything? What ignites a thought? A chance meeting with a new acquaintance or old friend? An email, a text, a dog’s bark, the weather, an online video, the news – the cat licking it’s arse – what random action or environmental thing triggers (and apologies in advance for using that word) a thought or thinking? And, again, in this case, thinking as reflection.
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Piping Fetishist

There’s an attention-grabber: bagpipe fetishist. Thinking here more drones than dominatrix. And fetishist in the context of “excessive attachment or regard”.
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Toothpaste and Judges

Judges working around the games might be compared, in a way, to a tube of toothpaste. Yep. You read that right.
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Battle of the Birds

The desperate battle of the birds. And, no, not a rare Friday night girl-fight, and no talk of the pibroch generally known by that name; a few words this moment on fighting flying feathered creatures.
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