22 posts tagged “arran”
This was partly inspired by my missing the annual UK gathering of the RMMGA newsgroup and partly by reading Duck Baker’s notes on Facebook. I had a lesson and concert with Duck back in Luxembourg [see this post] and his mentioning in his notes that he could do with a few more students got me thinking about how much I would enjoy becoming one student!
I started getting serious in 2002 when I got my first nice acoustic (a Lakewood M14). It was round about that time that I started posting on the Acoustic Guitar forum, and then on a variety of other forums. Eventually I even started my own, Celtic Guitar Talk, which is still going well on its own with very little input from me.
Through the Internet I met Doug Jones (Little Brother) and flew to Atlanta to attend his annual acoustic jam in Conyers. There I got to meet some of my online acquaintances and formed some of the most meaningful friendships I’ve ever formed in such a short space of time. Since I was already in the US, I took the opportunity to fly to El McMeen’s place in Sparta NJ for an extended lesson with him. [El McMeen]
I also met another bunch on the RMMGA newsgroup and started going to the annual UK gathering at Hargate Hall. It was similar to Little Brother’s jam in the way that great friendships were formed in a very short space of time. There’s just something about getting together with a bunch of like-minded players and escaping the humdrum with them for a few days. It’s the most wonderful thing.
At the first Little Brother jam I met Dave Skowron of Red Bear Trading (maker of the fabled Tortis Picks) and he suggested that I attend Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Kamp and I could sell his picks in Europe to help pay my way. So I agreed and spent a fantastic two weeks at Maryland College in Tennessee playing, studying and listening with some of the greatest players. I even played on stage with one of my heroes, Tony McManus.
Learning wise I was sitting at home with tab books, online videos and DVDs. I even got to the stage where I was doing Celtic workshops at the Little Brother jam and teaching the daughter of a friend of mine.
In short, my playing was progressing at a reasonable clip; I was enthusiastic to play, to learn, to teach and to chat online about guitars with my friends all day long.
My daughter was born a few months before the first Little Brother jam and I was pleased that fatherhood didn’t seem to be curbing my enthusiasm as seems to be the case with so many people I’ve met on my travels. Even after my son was born in 2006 I was still going to the US once a year and to the UK gathering.
We left Luxembourg in January 2008 and here I sit over one year later feeling the need to write about my playing now and how it has changed.
It wasn’t the kids that curbed my enthusiasm, it was my new job. I don’t even log in to my own forum these days and that seems to be a sign of the deeper malaise. I tell myself that I’d rather be playing that ‘chatting’ so I don’t bother logging in, but the truth is that one feeds the other. I know that from experience. I’m hardly in touch with my guitar-playing friends at all and have just missed the second UK gathering in a row (I also missed the LB jam for the first time in 5 years last year).
I didn’t play at all for the first six months of being in Arran. The job was just too tiring and overwhelming. When I did get the guitar out its case, it sounded so sweet and, much to my surprise, my chops were not actually all that rusty. I spent a few evenings in front of the coal fire with lights dimmed getting to know my instruments again and it was wonderful.
Soon after that, I began going to the weekly folk nights at one of the hotels on the island and enjoyed playing there. I’m still doing that now and thankfully have just found a few tunes from my back catalogue that I haven’t played there a thousand times, but that’s partly why I’m writing now: I haven’t learned anything new since I got here. I haven’t sat with my theory books, I haven’t opened a tab book, I haven’t done much of anything new. It’s all I can do to maintain my level and not let it slip too far.
There are some things on the horizon. I’ve met a lot of good players here and there are murmurings about getting a bluegrass band together, something I’ve wanted to do since I first heard the garage sessions at the first Little Brother jam. The Catacol sessions have also given birth to the Pirnmill sessions and I’m going to that as well and having fun. The scene on Arran is actually very healthy and it’s exciting.
What I miss is sitting with a tricky tune in tab and learning it to a performable level. I don’t record or do videos now and I miss that too. I miss travelling to play with my friends. I miss the hunger to learn the theory and to sight-read and to fly across the world for a lesson – okay, so I couldn’t afford that now anyway but it would be nice still to want to do it! I’m sure that if there were a good teacher nearby that I would sign up and attend lessons. I find that I need homework or something to work towards, but more than that, I need the energy and that’s what I guess I miss the most. The job I’m doing now is not physical but it’s mentally draining and bringing in very little money, and I find being skint also mentally draining in its own way. I miss all my online friends too.
I suppose I’m not really in a bad place over all. Firstly, I am playing at least once a fortnight. I need to try harder to get the guitar out its case between sessions though. And although I’m not learning new stuff of my own, I am accompanying others a lot more and learning more about how that works.
I suppose what is happening is that my playing is evolving to fit naturally around the environment and my own commitments and there isn’t really a whole lot more I could ask for. I’m determined not to become one of those players who give up until the kids fly the roost, although I now understand why that is so common, so in that sense I guess I do have something to be pleased about: we’re through the hardest part of moving and taking on the new business, and I managed to keep playing, even just enough.
http://s.tf1.fr/FluxJt/jt13d01012009/jt13d01012009r20.asx
A French crew did a piece on Arran and filmed us playing a folk session at the Catacol Bay Hotel. I'm the handsome one with the mandolin!
It was the Highland Games yesterday in Brodick. The morning was wet through to about midday and then it cleared up pretty much for the afternoon. There were five pipe bands over to the island, including one from Brittany. They all got off the 11 o'clock boat and I got to see them marching along Brodick main street from the Post Office. I closed up at 1-ish, got home and got Lorraine and the kids into the car and back into Brodick.
It was a great day watching the pipe bands, especially the mass band when all five marched round the playing fields. There was all the usual Highland Games events: caber tossing (see pictures), hammer throwing, beer barrels. I didn't see any Highland dancing strangely enough, but it could just be that there was some and we missed it. I think Freya would have enjoyed watching that.
The only annoying thing was the high number of wasps, evil things that they are. If it's not midges, it's bloody wasps. Ugh!
Anyway, it started winding down so I brought L and the kids home around 5-ish then headed back out for the march back through Brodick to the ferry terminal. There was a really heavy downpour as the bands were marching, so they were all wet through. Didn't seem to spoil their fun in the slightest though and the finale was great, watching all five bands cutting loose in the ferry car park, passing whisky round and just jamming. I was really wishing that I had my camera with me then and wishing even more that I had a 70-200 f/2.8 VR. That's my dream lens right at the minute.
Anyway, it was a fun day out and I'm looking forward to next year's already. Nothing gets to me like the sound of a pipe band, so imagine five of them playing together!
It was a good day today. Work went reasonably well, with the Co-Op coming in with their banking just before the time when it would have meant chasing my tail to close, although I did still end up chasing my tail anyway. But this isn't about that, it's about the afternoon. I got home around 2.30pm (not bad for a Saturday) and Freya was ready to hop into the car and go back in to Brodick for the church fair. We got there around three and it really was pretty mince to be honest. It's good for me to be seen at such things though, being, as I am, the subpostmaster and Freya enjoyed it and I enjoyed spending time with Freya. There were some silly games and they were reasonably fun, but the bric-a-brac or white elephant or whatever you call it, puhleese! Truly dreadful stuff for sale; to call it tat would be doing a disservice to the word tat. There was, however, facepainting, always a favourite of wee Freya, so we queued for all of about five minutes and then she got a snake painted on each cheek.
I told her she could do anything she wanted to do as it was daddy-daughter time and we were out to have some fun. She decided that she wanted to go to the swings in Corrie, the same ones that we visited a year or so ago when over on a recce mission and doubling as a visit with grandma and granddad. So I banged on Shostakovich's 10th symphony (annoyingly playing in only one speaker cos my car stereo has decided that that's how it's gonna be) and off we went to Corrie. We spent only 10 minutes or so given that we had to go shopping after that and it was getting pretty late. Freya was happy with that though, but did say that she would have preferred it if Hamish and Mummy could have come too. Bless.
Between the church fair and the trip to Corrie, I popped in to the bike shop to ask about components and repairs then dashed home to throw both of Lorraine's bikes in the back. We got a great bike seat for Hamish and fitted it to the good bike last week. Freya's bike attaches to the back of the good bike so Lorraine has been taking Freya to nursery school that way, with her on her own bike being towed and Hamish on his wee seat on the crossbar. But, being the grumpy little sod that he can be, he decided the other day to resist the bike seat as he wanted to stay at the park and, in the process of his tantrum, he kicked the good bike over and it landed on the dérailleur . I had the bike man look at it today and it's worse than we thought: the rear dropout is bent so that the hanging bit of the dérailleur catches on the spokes. The frame is aluminium (6061 tubing, whatever that may be) and the bike man was of the opinion that bending it back would snap it. So the good bike is now out of commission and I'm going to have to seek out a frame repair man to see if it can be fixed. As Mick Hucknall of Simply Red so aptly put it in the eighties, money's too tight to mention and buying a new bike frame isn't something that we can manage right now, so hopefully it will be fixable. It's just one of those things, right? I'm sure we'll laugh about it later, right? It's just not very funny right now .
Anyway, despite that, it was a good afternoon and we both really enjoyed being together. Being a dad really can be the best thing.
My mum and dad came to visit today and it was wonderful to see them.
My mum has had MS for many years and is more or less completely
immobile now. My dad also is not in great shape and is constantly
hooked up to an oxygen bottle. One of my mum's carers and her husband
brought them over in their black cab. It's big enough to get my mum
into in her wheelchair and my dad had his folded up. It's about 40
minutes to the ferry from where they live and then an hour's crossing
so it really was a big day out for them.
Freya was excited about them coming so we set off to meet them from the
ferry around 11 this morning. We went straight to the Post Office and I
showed them round my little shop and it was really nice that they were
able to see it. Bear in mind that my parents have not visited my home ever
because I've pretty much lived abroad for the last 10 years since I
finished university. In fact, the thought came to me as I waved them
goodbye that it is the first time ever that I've waved goodbye to them
from my own home. It's always been the other way round right up
until today!
After the PO we came back to the house and had some lunch and then
retired to the living room to watch Freya painting her my little pony
and having a blether.
It's always inspiring to see my folks and how they cope but
particularly when they show that they can still make trips like today.
Thanks for coming mum and dad!
I went to Holy Island for the first time today with Freya and Lorraine's mum (Lorraine had to stay home and carry on with her translation work :(
It was a great trip and a wonderful place to visit. It would be nice to do a retreat there one day. The peace and tranquillity there makes the Isle of Arran seem like a city centre and it was weird getting off the boat on our return and stepping on to the "mainland" of Arran!
We didn't manage to get there in time for the Lama's talk at 2.30, which was a shame, but it was still worth making the 10-minute crossing. Next time we'll go with Lorraine and Hamish too, maybe take a picnic and do some walking.
Since moving to the Isle of Arran and staring our new lives here, my techo life has changed dramatically. I used to spend hours reading blogs, reviewing hardware, doing Photoshop courses, etc. Now I'm having to run a Post Office and shop and I just don't have time any more for any of that good stuff. I've played guitar for probably no more than a couple of hours in total since getting here three months ago.
But that's the way it has to be.
It's be tremendously hard and it continues to be that way. We used to be fairly well off, with savings in the bank and enough disposable income to satisfy my impulse buys of hardware and gadgets. Now the savings are gone, the bills are piling up and I'm having to make do with the old CRT TV that came with the house we're renting (not that I have time to watch it much anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter really).
This is us about to get on the ferry last month for a trip to Ikea to buy some display cabinets for the shop.
But having said all that, I was walking along the main street in the village and people were saying hello and how are you and I really felt like I belong here in a way that I haven't felt since leaving home a long time ago. We were never particularly happy living overseas, especially me, and so although it's so hard sometimes that I feel like we're not going to make it, deep down I'm happier than I've been in years. I love the challenge of taking on this new thing that's so overwhelming at times and the job side of things is starting to get easier. I think I'm a decent boss, at least I try to be, and we're slowly making the business our own. Lorraine has done brilliantly well ordering stock and we now have two display cabinets in the window with a decent range of teddies (from cheap-n-cheerful to designer) and a range of Island Porcelain (locally made hand-crafted wildlife in porcelain). I've also got a display cabinet full of guitar strings but the word has yet to spread as I've not yet managed to get out and play. There's quite a vibrant folk scene on the island and nowhere to buy strings. Just got to get out and play some and meet some players. Soon, Camuel, soon.
But yes, I do miss my blog time, my hobby time, hell, just the chance to veg out for an hour. Now it's home at 8 or 9 then into doing the books, the wages, the orders, or whatever else needs doing. Some nights I get home at 7 and wind up in bed at 8 with the kids.
Both the kids are happy here and are growing, oh how they grow. We forced ourselves to take half an hour out last Sunday and do the 2-minute walk to the beach (yes, I should count that particular blessing every day) where I got a few shots of the family.
I remember how I used to feel the need to make sure that I was caught up with my RSS feeds every morning and enjoyed doing that when I was supposed to be doing other things like work *cough*. Now I actually am having to work really hard and I haven't logged on to Google reader in months. I guess it's history for the time being, as is Vox pretty much, which is a shame as I often find myself wondering how my 'hood is getting on. Perhaps it'll even out in a few months' time, once I've got into the rhythm and can afford a bit more time out, so if y'all just bear with me and hopefully I'll be back Voxing a bit more often again.
@ontheprowl - not sure if you're reading this but I'm still digging your mixes
@stevebetz & greywolf - my book chums. Still not listened to the fourth GRRM and probably won't bother until all books are released. I hate to wait and forget too easily.
@venus - hope you're keeping up with the weight loss. Sorry I've not been keeping up.
@cat - hope you're hellish nightmare is getting less hellish and less nightmarish.
Well, we made it... just. It's been one of the hardest weeks of our lives and I never, ever want to go through it again. Having an 18-month old makes everything so much harder. Plus we had too much stuff. And all the lost weekends when people would invite us round during the only real packing time we had meant that, even after staying up the whole night before leaving, we still couldn't do it. Lorraine left with the kids on Tuesday morning at 6.15. It should have been 6.00 and, thanks to the Tom Tom, we missed the train in Arlon. Thankfully she still made her flight, but barely.
Then I was back to the apartment to wake my brother up and try and get everything into the neighbour's garage. My brother had slept from 3am so got a good 4 and a half hours. I, on the other hand, hadn't slept at all and had been up and down to the garage all night long, all 43 stairs, carrying box after box. The landlord came round about 10 as scheduled and by this time I was close to collapse. Just the exhaustion, the stress and not eating properly at all. I ended up laying on the kitchen floor while my friend, whom I'd called in for some urgent help, tried to communicate with the landlord for me. He ended up having to call his wife to talk to the landlord on the phone to interpret into the landlord's native Italian. We agreed that I was going nowhere that day - I wasn't fit for anything. Then we decided that my brother would still be able to make the ferry and take the cat, providing we could get the cat out from behind the kitchen units. If he couldn't get her out, he could still make the ferry but then I'd have to get the ferry too, and have to take our car, which means we'd spend a fortune and not be able to leave the car behind to sell it (because the Brits like to be different and drive on the other side, have different electrical sockets, different currency, etc.) Anyway, we knocked the bottom panel off the cooker and managed to get the cat out, get her to the vet's before the 11.30 deadline (she needed tick and worm treatment between 24 and 48 hours of arrival in the UK - not easy to arrange).
So, with my brother departed, I went to my friend's house and collapsed for a few hours. Then back to the apartment to see the mess and start shifting it all to my friend's. We did about half, then I started sorting it the next morning to see what to throw, what to ship and what to bring on the next morning's flight. Another dear friend of mine met me at the apartment at lunch time and we got the rest of the stuff to our friends. Then she fed me a really good meal at her mum's and we went back together to sort out the rest of the stuff. Then a trip to the recycling centre with all the stuff we were not taking or shipping and then back to box up what was left ready to ship.
She then fed me another good meal at her mum's after we'd shifted all the boxes for shipping to her parents' garage. And we were done! I flew out at 11 the next morning, got the ferry to Arran that night and have been here since Wednesday night.
The whole ordeal has taught me two things, one is that I love my wife, and the other is that friendship is one of the most valuable things in life. I really could not have done it had it not been for my two friends in my hour of need.
The new house is nice but full of old furniture and we have to try and fit around it. So far it's working out but it's taking a long time. And now that we've got all the furniture pretty much where we want it, I can't even start unboxing as I'm heading out in a few hours for two weeks' training on the mainland. It's quite frustrating. Still, I guess it'll work out in time. I have to learn how to be patient.
And so ends my first post from Arran. It really has come to pass!
Everything is falling into place. We have to be out of our flat by 1 January so the packing will need to move up a gear after the weekend. It has been difficult because our weekends are filled up with farewell visits to friends and that's really the only time that we can get any proper packing done.
We're staying at a friend's after 1 January and leaving Lux on the 7th. My brother is bringing a 7.5-tonne truck over on the ferry from Rosyth on the east coast of Scotland to Zeebrugge in Belgium, leaving on the 3rd and arriving on the 4th. Then we leave on the 7th, arrive on the 8th and then go straight to Arran to our new rented house. It's going to be hectic, no doubt stressful and difficult but ultimately worth it.
I then have two weeks' training in Glasgow from the 14th and I take over the Post Office on the 30th. The dream is getting close!
Just a quick one as I haven't written about the move to Arran in ages and I know that some of my hoodies were interested.
I start the new job at the Post Office on 30 January. That's the day we take over the business. I've got two weeks of training in Glasgow before that. We're moving from Lux on 7 January. My brother is bringing a 7.5 tonne truck over and we're doing the move ourselves. He's bringing it from Rosyth (Scotland) to Zeebrugge (Belgium) on 3 January, arriving in Zeebrugge on 4 Jan (it's an 18 hour crossing). Then we pack the truck and leave on 7 Jan to arrive in Scotland on 8 Jan and then the ferry to Arran on the evening of 8 Jan. We've got the house on Arran all sorted out pretty much. I got the phone line installed (that was fun, trying to get that done when nobody was in the house - thanks to our soon-to-be-new neighbours it worked out). Next thing is to choose an ISP (I'm going with one of the Entanet resellers as they have no restrictive fair-use policies and plenty of bandwidth and a good reputation for 20 quid a month). Got to order a phone and a modem and some filters.
The au pair is also sorted out and has booked her flights. A nice French girl called Rachel. She's staying until the summer and we've almost chosen her successor (a German speaker).
I've scanned LOADs of paper into my SnapScan and shredded. We're selling/chucking lots of stuff. Some boxes are already packed. We just got an Epson V750 scanner to scan boxes of old photos so we can chuck them. Freya is enrolled for nursery.
Now we only have a few weekends left and they are filling up fast with farewell visits. It's tough as that is the only time we can properly pack anything. Just one of those things I suppose.
Lorraine STILL hasn't handed in her notice and will not be doing so for a few weeks yet. We're worried that it would jeopardise her end-of-year bonus so we're leaving it until the last possible minute (20 Dec, or Dec 20 for our American readers ;)). So this will still be hood only.
Hamish has awoken. I'd better go. Not long to go now and we're getting excited!
