The Thornton Highland Games

Once again, it has been a busy weekend with the band. On Thursday, we played at the Falkirk stadium, celebrating the team's first ever match in European competition. This was a good night, especially as Falkirk won the match 1-0, and might just have done enough to qualify for the next round. Maybe.

On Saturday, we were playing at the Falkirk Wheel once again for fundraising purposes. Unfortunately, with the weather not being terribly good, we didn't do particularly well. This was a shame, as the band actually played really well. Still, it was worth doing. We were also very lucky - we decided to finish early, and just as we did so the heavens opened, and so we narrowly avoided getting soaked.

Yesterday, we found ourselves at the Thornton Highland Games for yet another competition. It was a reasonable day, although there was a rather nasty wind during most of it, and a few light showers.

At the Thornton Games, we played three times, in the Grade Four competition, the Grade Three competition and an Open competition. This last was the organisers' attempt to attract a few higher-grade bands to their games, while not being able to attract enough to justify a full competition for those grades. Unfortunately for them, it didn't really work, so they got us instead. However, I'm not really interested in any competition other than the Grade Four.

The band played really well. In fact, we put in the best performance we have managed at any contest at any point this year. For the first time, we managed to all start correctly, we didn't let the tunes run away with us, and we got the phrasing of the tune right. After our success at Cupar, hopes were high that we would be in or around the prizes once again.

The judges felt differently. Despite the feedback forms not indicating anything particularly wrong with the performance, we nonetheless came seventh. (The results aren't online yet, so I don't know how big the field was. I believe there were eight or nine bands present.)

This was an especially disappointing result. Previously, we've had to look back and admit that we didn't play well, and that the results were therefore fair and accurate. The onus on us has been to improve, and then the results would follow.

But yesterday we know we played well. And, what's more, there isn't any clear indication of why we did poorly, or what we should be doing to improve. It's purely a matter of what seem to be reasonably encouraging comments on the sheet, followed by a surprisingly high number.

Oh well, no point in dwelling on it. Next week we have the third Major of the season, the European Championships at Inverclyde, followed by the Callendar Highland Games, the site of our one and only success last year.

#28: "A Sword From Red Ice", by J.V. Jones