The first question they asked me about my appearance wasn't about what I was going to say or what equipment I needed, but whether I would be having lunch. This is a good sign. I took a wind-up gramophone (my Gran's HMV 102 portable, just like this one), an iPad and a melodica, and we explored some examples of early fiddle sources, playing some tunes and basslines. I was asked some extremely intelligent and pertinent questions, much more searching and relevant than the questions I'd generally be asked in a university, and it was all really very useful indeed, to me anyway. Often you only find out what you know about something when someone asks you the right question, and I'd never really thought before about there being a continuum or spectrum in Scottish fiddle sources between the actual documentation of musical practice and the idealisation and transformation of it for other purposes.

 

Anyway, after all this interaction, David Francis asked me 'Can you stay on and take part in our afternoon creative exercise?' OK. I wasn't really expecting to stage a wedding on a boat, try to save a drowning drunk with my hat, or get eaten by a shark. And the level of musical talent being put to completely childish purposes was very impressive: Raymond MacDonald was officiating at the wedding on behalf of the Church of John Coltrane, and Gráinne Brady was the shark, for example, and the whole thing was just a bit silly ... but the process of negotiating the details of a performance in a very short space of time with a new group of people is something we all have to do as musicians now and again. And we laughed a lot. I also met Callum Armstrong for the first time, and we found we had quite a lot to talk about (and not just that he has a green HMV 102) ... more another time I'm sure.