Forgive the oxymoronic thread please the 2 of you reading this... quiet isn't it?

I was wondering if anyone else in the central belt of the beffudled mess that is England is up for a monthly meet and session? There will have to be a few of us to make it work as no doubt on any one night at least 50% of the people who profess an intrest will not be available, a couple more will not be in the mood and someone else's car won't start and their street will have flooded.

Register your interest on this thread if you've half a notion that you might fancy it, please note the thread is border pipes not small pipes. This is my preference as a border pipe 'player' but I guess it doesn't have to be yours so shove border pipe or small pipe into your response depending on which you'd be bringing to the party. Presuming enough of an interest to get something going.

Wow the silence is broken only by an erie wailling...probably a badly tuned drone.

What's up all been busy watching the 'lympix or something?

Ok I'm almost at the point of retreat but will chuck this into the fray before I do...

Anyone in the region interested in a teaching bash of some description? If there's a few of us I'm sure we could raise sufficient funds to attract suitable tutor(s) for a day or two of events much the same but probably necessarilly smaller than the LBPS affair held anually north of the border.

To my way of thinking these events, playing with and listening to great and established players in a live setting are invaluable to learning and developing with the instrument. In short the goals would be fun, inspiration and learning all in an event that didn't involve dragging everything several hundred miles north for a change.

That said perhaps there's just not enough of us down here. Maybe the midlands isn't a suitable venue. London might be better although that will be considerably more expensive no doubt. Possibly this was all tried before and there's good reason nothing similar is going on now, I don't know this is all pretty new to me. I'm just wishing there was something going on more locally that would help shake off the feeling of being just a "bedroom borderpiper" !!!

Might be worth getting in touch with the Bagpipe Society- their annual Bowout festival is at Polesworth(?) N. of Birmingham.

Two or three years ago I was involved in getting Gary West down to teach for the weekend- they have a room for a specialised workshop like that alongside the usual French stuff etc which is the main part of the weekend.

This was quite popular and successful but has not been repeated- possibly not sufficiently Eurocentric/medieval/obscure for BagSoc!

Cheers
Richard Evans

Might be worth getting in touch with the Bagpipe Society- their annual Bowout festival is at Polesworth(?) N. of Birmingham.

Two or three years ago I was involved in getting Gary West down to teach for the weekend- they have a room for a specialised workshop like that alongside the usual French stuff etc which is the main part of the weekend.

This was quite popular and successful but has not been repeated- possibly not sufficiently Eurocentric/medieval/obscure for BagSoc!

Cheers
Richard Evans

Hi Richard

Thanks for the suggestion. I must confess those Bagsoc folk do seem rather out there Still at least it seems there ARE a few of them out there... I wonder if it's a case of if you build it they will come. That likely will require a speculative cash layout I'm not sure I'm prepared to make on the basis of the lack of response to this thread and the lack of action on the LBPS boards in general. I'd see about an LBPS grant to make something happen but as a newbie I understandably do not qualify for consideration for development grant funding.

That all said east mids and b'ham airports both have cheap and cheerfull flights to Glasgow and Edinburgh, hotel reservations can be cancelled at short notice, venues can be had free and perhaps an instructor or 2 can be persuaded to head this way, between commitments, on the promise of a fee if the event actually comes off. Still at which point does an event like that get declared viable? The LBPS competiton only just got away with it by the sounds of things and that has both a little history and quite a lot of good will going for it.

If any suitably accomplished instructor is reading this and fancies adding their input regarding fees, practicalities, availability and any other relevent considerations or observation please feel free to get in touch. Perhaps piggybacking a gig onto proceedings might make the event more viable...?