Here’s a set of Scottish tunes I recorded this afternoon. A few bum notes, but you get the idea.

Dad and I went out sailing yesterday around Poole Bay. I think it was the furthest we’ve sailed – a total of just over 17 nautical miles basically in a straight line straight out past Old Harry Rocks and back. The reason we were able to go so far is that the wind was quite strong and we kept a pretty good average speed up – we seemed to be doing at least 5.5 knots every time I looked.

Dad’s been having all sorts of issues with his Mister Vee wind-vane self-steering, but for the first time it seemed to work properly. However, it soon went wrong. The problem we found out later was that a rivet had broken that was holding one of the gears in place. This allowed the gear to slip (when there was enough force to overcome the friction of it on the axle) and allow the system to fail. Hopefully with that rivet fixed, the next time we go out we won’t have to do much steering, which was the tiring bit. Windy sailing is like being on a rowing machine and we were out for 4 hours!

If, with improbability, I was made Secretary of Defence in the new government and, with somewhat more improbability, I was thrown into a war against thousands of insurgent, malnourished, enemies whom the only way to kill was to overfeed them, I would surely require a weapon of mass consumption (WMC). Something so hideously moorish that once our sworn enemies get wind of the tempting feast, they would consume until they expired in an explosion of intestines.

Perhaps you might consider a jam roly poly to be perfect WMC. Sweet, claggy and truely delicious. But its clagginess could be its downfall. After a few bowls of the poly, the distended stomachs of our unfortunate enemies would say no more and they would stop eating. Also, the sticky pudding does not lend itself to being air dropped, particularly if you include custard.

Perhaps bars of Snickers, Kit Kat Chunkys or Boosts? No, they’re all too sweet and our enemies would just chunder.

No, it’s clear to me, as the decision maker in this war, that there is only one way to successfully beat the enemy. There is only one worthy weapon that will so enrapture our enemies that they will consume until they explode. That is the dangerously addictive tub of Pringles.

In a single air drop millions of tubs could be harmlessly rained upon our enemies. The label on the outside could be replaced with “Important Medical Supplies” or something, but once they popped open that lid, their fate would be sealed. Mr.Infadel would peer inside expecting bandages and plasters. But inside would only be strangled double curved, thin as you like potato chips. He’d grunt and cautiously proffer one to his mouth. Not overly excited by the pleasure he would never-the-less proffer another to his mouth, and another and another, unable to control his urge for another. He would continue, beginning to place two at a time, then three at a time until each grab was enough to force his cheeks out and make it hard to chew. At the end of the tub, despite having a raging thirst and a stomach ache, he would fight his mother for her tub and begin chowing down another entirely different flavour that tasted exactly the same as the last one.

Soon all our enemies would be embroiled in a civil war, rioting and looting taking place just for another cylindrical tub of salty chips. Near the end only a couple of our enemy would be left; waddling around searching for either another tub or a bathful of water to drink. They would eventually expire as giant salt crystals popped out of their ears and the war would be won.

Handle weapons of mass consumption with the utmost care.

Yesterday I had a young Eastern European chap from Sky turn up at the door to try to sell me their wares.

At first he told me that others in the area had had trouble with Freeview reception so Sky were doing a promotion. Well I don’t have any trouble with Freeview. “Perhaps they haven’t retuned or they have old aerials”, I told him. I tried my best to look uninterested in his products. I don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen as a principle, so perhaps I should have told him that instead.

Having no luck with the Freeview reception, he instead went for the “HD TV is great” tactic but as I don’t yet have an HD telly it would be pointless to get an HD box. “But the box still works on an old TV and when you upgrade you’ll already have HD”, he countered. But when I upgrade my TV it’s going to have a Freeview HD tuner and I won’t need an HD box.

“Do you watch lots of TV?” he asked.
“No, not really”.
He agreed… “Not much on, is there?” He was trying to sell me a TV product, wasn’t he? He then went for the Sky box will record the stuff you like while you’re out, but once again we already have a PVR that does that.

So, then he asked how much I pay for internet and who I’m with, trying to sell me Sky Broadband instead. You have to give him his due; he was trying hard.

I recently moved to Zen Internet. They’re slightly more expensive than regular ISPs but they have no traffic shaping at their ISP and provide you with the fastest internet you can get for the price. They also have a 25Gb download limit with a pretty decent monitoring application from which I found I’m using around 18Gb a month, so Mr.Sky Broadband’s 10Gb limit wouldn’t be enough. I told him this. “Well, we can give you the unlimited package and for just £39 a month you get TV, telephone and broadband… just £7 more than you’re paying to BT and Zen.” Ooh, just £7 for Sky TV! But hold on, I don’t want Sky TV!!

I sent him away without a sale. Fail.

Here’s some fiddle videos I’ve uploaded recently. They represent about 2 years of me playing fiddle.

3 Reels:

3 Jigs:

IN 2 weeks I will be playing a gig for the first time with the band I’ve joined. Saoirse (seer-sher) was formed when Eamonn, a guitarist from Ireland, asked me if I wanted to play with himself and Heather (who plays the uilleann pipes) after I played at the Bournemouth Folk Club accompanying a young singer called Fi Harris. On the Sunday 14th March, a couple of days before Paddy’s night, we’ll be playing support at the Bournemouth Folk Club. We’ve been practising since August and have a 30 minute set which still needs some work. Hopefully it will be recorded so I’ll upload the video if it goes well

I’m a lucky chap. I’m getting on now (I’m 33 yesterday) but I still have a great family who always manage to get me some really fun presents. Wii was definitely a feature of this year’s gifts and tonight I’ve been playing Wii Fit Plus. There’s some great new games in it, although my favourites are the juggling and the kung fu. I also got Mario Kart, Colin McRae Dirt Rally and another fitness one (can’t remember the name of it).

My folks paid for half of my new fiddle for me. A week ago today, I went to John Dike’s Violins in Sherborne and managed to find one stand out fiddle. In fact, the rest I didn’t much like but I liked this French fiddle that had been recently repaired from a sound post crack down the back. It cost £800, but my parents have kindly offered to pay half, so that was my very generous present from them.

Yesterday evening I went and saw the new Pixar movie, Up. It was really good. I could see myself in the old man, Carl. We saw it in 3D too, which was really great. Caroline wasn’t so impressed with the 3D, but I thought it worked well. It’s a reason to actually go to the cinema rather than just wait until it comes out on Blue Ray! We ate beforehand at TGI Friday’s a gorgeous, if somewhat oversized, meal before using our vouchers to get in the film for free

We’re off out tomorrow lunch for a meal with my parents and sister. I’m not sure if we’ve decided where to go yet, but we’ve also got various shopping tasks to do too before going to a fireworks do in the evening. Sunday evening we’re off around a musician friend’s house for another bonfire do. It’s a busy weekend!

A couple of weeks ago Daisy and I started on our diet again. I’d ballooned to 13 stone 8lb (86kg, 190lb) and my legs were starting to feel it: I’ve been having some trouble with my right hip for the last few weeks. Daisy’s also put on weight (better not tell!) so we’re back on the WeightWatchers diet again. It’s a very good diet – you can still have goodies as long as you count the points and don’t go over for the week. We don’t visit the meetings because we have all the books to do it ourselves (although it’s debatable if we have the motivation that the meetings give you).

Before we started the diet, we had already decided to do more exercise. Once a week I meet up with my friend and play badminton or squash, while Daisy goes swimming or to aqua aerobics with my friend’s partner. Last night I played squash for the first time in a while (both my friend and I prefer badminton). It was no more knackering than badminton, but much harder to play. That said, I felt much more able to play the game than the last time I played a couple of months ago. Still, I think we’ll continue to play badminton most often.

It’s a difficult time to start a diet. With my birthday and Christmas coming up, one must have nerves of steel not to end up binge eating. I’m sure we’ll forget the points on my birthday and Christmas day but we must stand strong on the days following.

It was Halloween last night and as I live in “bungalow city”, the lair of the old and infirm, I was not expecting any Trick or Treaters. In fact, we’ve not had any Trick or Treaters since we first moved here over 6 Halloweens ago. So it came as a surprise when the door bell rang while I was sitting, wrapped up in a blanket, enjoying Strictly Come Dancing.

Caroline and I looked at each other. We’ve just started a diet, so we have a lot of spare chocolate hanging around the house at the moment and we had already made some decisions about what we might give a Trick or Treater — it pays to be ready!

I begrudgingly got up and headed to the cupboard to get the boxes of sweets. When I got to the door I could see two young girls, probably early teens, standing outside dressed in black with blackish faces. They’d made a bit of an effort at least. More than the boys who once turned up to my mother-in-law’s house who wanted a penny for the guy when their guy was just their brother in a pram. I would have liked to have seen them burning that one!

I answered the door with my best scared face on. They weren’t scary, but I thought I would humour them.

“Wahh.. what have we got here?”
“Trick or Treat?”
“Uhm…”, I thought for a minute. Shall I let them off lightly? Nahh. “Well, what will you do if I don’t give you a treat?”

This came as a shock to them. ‘Was it really necessary to think up tricks these days?’ They looked at each other. They clearly hadn’t come prepared for having to actually do tricks. They just wanted the treats. One thought quickly.

“I’ll shine my torch in your face,” she proffered as a possible scary thing. Oh no, not the Torch of Dooom!
“That’s not a very good trick, is it?” I said, knowing the Torch of Doom was clearly the Harbinger of the Apocalypse.
“Oh, er…” It was clear at this point they were getting desperate. Was it possible this mad old bloke wasn’t actually going to give them chocolate after all their ‘effort’. The quick thinker had an idea and began to crack her fingers. It was quite gross and I’d put them through enough, so I feigned disgust at the cracking and got the chocolates.

I bought a couple of big boxes of “pick-n-mix” type ‘chocolate’ sugar shape things a while back during a weak moment in a wholesalers. We hadn’t got around to eating many because they’re really quite sickly. I’m sure they’re 99% sugar and 1% colouring. I offered our the box and the ghouls’ eyes lit up. “Whoa…” I told them to take a handful and they duly did, putting their booty into the bag they were carrying just for the occasion.

I remember back in the days when the idea was to go out with bags of sugar that you threatened to throw at the occupant’s car or their windows or, if you were really mean, at them! Nowadays kids go out without a thought about the tricks; they might as well turn up at your door and say “Chocolate or not?”

It’s been a while since I updated — it always is I’ve been meaning to post these two videos for a while.

The first I did after seeing Breabach play a concert in Wimborne as part of the Celtic Folk club here. They were fantastic. Ewan Robertson plays guitar and sings, Callum MacCrimmon and Donal Brown play pipes, whistles and flutes and the lovely Pasty Reid plays fiddle. Unfortunately Donal wasn’t there, but another fantastic chap took his place (although I can’t remember his name right now). At the concert we indulged in a purchase of their CD – The Big Spree – and it has since (3 weeks now) been a permanent fixture in the car’s CD player. On that CD the band sing a song called The Rolling Hills of the Borders. It was written by Glaswegian Matt McGinn but it’s Breabach’s version that I really like. I attempted my own version (not a patch on their’s but still fun to do).

I also did another music video recently. It’s a couple slides played on the concertina and the fiddle: The Road to Lisdoonvarna and Two Little Boats Went Out to Sea.