After two weeks wondering what to write about, it’s all happened at once, so here’s three blogs all at once. Yesterday was parade day here in Kirkcudbright and today was duck race day (which gets a blog all of it’s own) and vintage car rally day too. Tomorrow is tattoo day and I have my ticket for that bought – it’ll be the first time I’ve been for years so you’ll be hearing about that when it happens. This weekend pretty much marks the end of organised touristy type events and anyone passing through after this weekend will have to keep themselves entertained.
All this coupled with the start of the sculpture symposium (which I intend to bore you all silly with here) and to ice the cake Alec, our next door neighbour and local folky drummer, popped in to announce an impromptu session last night. So was a quick bag up of the guitar and mandolin and pile into Alec’s car with Dad and his fiddle and Mother (who acts as an emergency audience). Just to make it a bit cosier on the way to Ken Bridge (a wee pub in the middle of nowhere which seems to do very well for a wee pub in the middle of nowhere – may also have the best beer in the county) we picked up Martin and his guitar en route. Since I seem to have mentioned most of the company anyway, I should also say that Davey turned up, who has at least one mouth organ for every key you can think of, and Sean and his new banjo, which he’s had for about two years now – which shows how long since I’ve been to sessions regularly. No photos I’m afraid but a few very nice pints and some great tunes – all in all, one of the best little sessions I’ve had for a very long time.
Here’s some parade pictures
The local cornet and cornet's lass
The Stewarty wind band (which incidentally contains two of my nieces, who are not the greatest fans of tartan trousers)
The town pipe band
No parade or event in the area seems to be complete without an appearance from the Twynholm tractor club - at the other end of the motoring scale, Twynholm has also given the world David Coulthard to try and make up for this.
Here's we are a day later (that's today) at the vintage car rally. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a petrol head but if I scoop a big pile on the lottery, I might just be tempted to get one of these.
In the absence of a lottery win, this is more likely.
The local jazz quartet will turn out for any event at the drop of a hat.
