Like the title says, it's been a while since I last posted on here and I have a raft of excuses why that is.
Work has been hectic and difficult, age has been creeping up and the general pace of the life I lead seems to be increasing on a weekly basis. Often-times over the course of the last year or so I have found myself wanting to do nothing quite so much as curl up in a ball.
The usual fodder on here in recent years has been Pipe Band related - and in common with many other exponents of the genre, my Band has fallen on troubled times. Indeed, I had posted an article addressing what I think is at the root of the problem for many bands about a year ago and then took it down, for fear that its tone was too reactionary. Looking back, I don't believe that it was and I'll repost that again shortly.
I made the traditional trip to Glasgow over the period of the World Pipe Band Championships and acquired the usual copious amounts of video footage. As some of the you may have seen, I also undertook a slightly different video project in making daily(ish) Vlog style records of the days from Tuesday through to Saturday of "Worlds Week". In truth, I also have footage from Sunday but as it lacks any real pipe band content I haven't uploaded that yet. I was broadly pleased with the reception to the Vlogs - although it was interesting to note that engagement tailed off as the week went on. I partially attribute that to the fact that by the end of the week most of those who would be most interested were either in Glasgow themselves or were thoroughly in a state of pipe band exhaustion following live streaming Grade One.
In my own opinion, I think that the Vlogs actually serve as a better record of the Piping Live events and the Worlds than many of my other recordings on the basis that they take in a little more of the colour of the City and of the event rather than the robotic recording of practices and performances. On that basis - and because I sort of enjoy the creative process - I hope to continue this pattern in subsequent years. I still have huge amounts of footage of the bands to upload and hope to get started on that shortly.
What was missing (due to concentration on the video) this year was the posting on here of commentary/predictions/results.
I think that posting results in the age of Twitter and Facebook Live now seems redundant but I suppose there remains some place for comment. I had really hoped to have time to do an analysis before the Worlds of the Results earlier in the year to see if they could be used to predict who would lift the World Title but life got in the way. I may still give it a go, but time will be the deciding factor once again.
At this point suffice to say that FMMPB was a worthy winner and it was strangely gratifying to hear them loudly cheered from the announcement all the way back to their bus after a few years of some less than gracious cat-calling while they dominated all before them....
I'll be back