Steenie Steenson, well-kent grumpy old piper, sends us his ramblings and rattlings

Greetings from Primrose Knowe, bathed in the gentle rain of springtime. But it’s a pleasant bit all the same and I think the air is callerer here than onywhere else.  You’ll recall, I don’t doubt, that I made mention last time of my discovery of the word ‘ossianation’ and my complaint that it was an affliction that I for one felt had overtaken me. Now I find that we old pipers are in danger on another front, one I can only call Sordellination. We are to be presented with keys and holes and other gubbins, metallic and otherwise, erupting from every orifice on our chanters. Well I can assure you I’m having none of it, and if it means I’m left to be a ‘rustic’ [to use the editor’s term] then so be it. I’ve spent most of my very long life struggling to keep nine notes in tune; I have no desire for more, thankyou.
As for printed bagpipes, on that topic it is probably best that I hold my peace.
Though I’m probably not allowed to comment on the matter [why, I wonder, are such matters always the ones that preoccupy me most?], I can’t escape the prospect that by the next time I sit down to write this column I could be facing the thought of living in a ‘new’ nation.
Since the thought first occurred I keep being awoken by a terrifying dream that I’m piping for Scotland in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Well, I’ve been around long enough to remember when this whole business began. Then, of course, though we had the wool well-and-truly pulled over our eyes, we had no say at all in the matter. So things do change, it seems; all I’m going to say is I shall be thinking very carefully  The days of my youth, when any idle fancy could turn my head, those days are long, long gone. Not that I don’t already know what I think…