Cupar Highland Games

Spurred on by Captain Ric's cruelty last week, the band were determined to play better this week. Or maybe that was just me.

The bus was scheduled to leave for Cupar at 10:45 in the morning, and so we gathered at the school at 10:30, ready to board and get going. Alas, there was no bus. So, we waited. Half an hour later, we were starting to get worried. Even more worrying, the pipe major had forgotten his phone, so might have been getting a call even then explaining the problem, but we would never know...

The bus arrived at 11:30 sharp. It seems there had been a slight mis-communication somewhere along the line. Still, no matter - the competition didn't start until 13:45, so we had plenty of time...

As we travelled, the rain started. Oh yes, we thought, today is going to be a good day.

Just as we arrived in Cupar, just as we were getting to the competition field, a random phone rang. It was a friend of the band, who had been calling around after failing to reach the pipe major. Apparently, we were due to go on any minute, as why weren't we there yet? We pointed out that it wasn't yet one o'clock, and so we should have had plenty of time. It seems there was another slight miscalculation.

We arrived, and rushed off the bus. There then followed a frantic tuning session, during which the rain stopped, and then we had to go on and play. (Truth is, that probably helped us - the wait to go on and play can be a real killer.)

We played better than last week, but still not as well as we can.

(Due to the size of the competition, we were also entered in the Grade Three competition. We played that one slightly better again, but it's not really relevant to the discussion.)

After we had played, we hunted down some food. (Cupar is a wild and dangerous place, where a man can eat only those things that he can bring down with his own wits. I personally trapped a steak pie by enticing it by laying a bed of chips in a cunningly-placed cardboard box.)

Also, there was tennis on, although we didn't have time to watch the whole thing.

We then returned to the bus to play the march past, marvelling at how glorious and sunny the day had become. And then came the result.

We came fourth, out of six bands in our grade. Which, amongst other things, represents our first prize of the season. So, all in all, not a bad day.