"A Guid Blaw..."

This is the City of Newcastle Pipe Band practising at today's world pipe band championships in Glasgow. I had to check which Newcastle it was since there were pipe bands from places as diverse as Canada, Scotland, Zimbabwe, Belgium and even Mexico. The winner, again, was the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band from Northern Ireland.

The pipes can be very haunting at times. Once I was at the Menin Gate Ceremony in Ieper and suddenly and unexpectedly I heard the skirl of the pipes in the distance and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. It was a Scottish school which had come to remember the former pupils who fell in the Great War.

Today was an altogether lighter day with not only music but highland games as well, including throwing the welly.