Music and friends

Throughout the summer and for the rest of our stay in Scotland we were incredibly lucky to meet many wonderful musicians who became close friends and made our lives joyful. They came with their families and friends to stay with us and play in the pubs and village hall - and we stayed with them on their home ground and went to concerts and pub sessions and generally had a great time.

Wendy Stewart and Alan James came with harp, concertina, whistle and guitar. I'll always remember one particular morning sitting in the sun outside Castlehill listening to the two of them play and gazing out at the islands and the sea - and when the wind blew it would play its own fairy music on the harp strings. It was magical!

Jimmy and Ruth Philp would come with their kids from the east coast, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends who, along with Pete Taylor (our local musical phenomenon), had a band that played gigs together around the area. Each had their signature songs - called for over and over again on ceilidh nights. And as the whisky went around we would lapse into old gospel songs or just plain silly stuff. We made a wonderful tape called "The Last Castlehill Ceilidh" which has some great music recorded at our house - and some incredibly awful but very funny attempts - obviously recorded very late in the evening.

Dik Banovich, who sang Fats Waller-type songs and played a mean jazz guitar, came with his friend Tiny (who was way over 6 feet tall - must have been imposing in a kilt) - to visit us when they were in between busking forays on the Continent. We had a great trip with them to a music festival and highland games weekend on Skye. This was when we were introduced to the dreaded call by those well-oiled folks in any pub audience who always called out - ad nauseum - "Play 'Flower of Scotland'". Cringe. But Dick always handled it very well and patiently - and actually - I like the song.

And so they filled our home with music - flute, recorder, harp, squeezebox, bodhran, mandolin, guitar, pennywhistle, violin - and always singing. What could be better?