Hogmanay

There's a thrum of excitement in the pit of my stomach which threatens to escape as laughter. Eileen's on my left, unclipping straps to free her concertina. I catch her eye and we both grin broadly. Dave springs up the steps to join us on the stage, tunes his fiddle to my flute, and we race each other through a slip jig. Now we're ready, and as soon as Rab reappears we can start. Rab's our caller, the one who guides the dancers through jigs and reels, who gives good craic to break the ice, who weaves the magic of the ceilidh.

Tonight, for once, I'm playing on home ground. There are very few unfamiliar faces. Morag Stephen from the bakery has just arrived, raising an arm in greeting before bending to unpack her two young daughters from hooded, pink, down-filled jackets. Earlier, auld Jim Robertson, unusually trig in his dress tartan kilt, but still wearing his bunnet, dandered across the hall to join Bruce and Irene from the post office. A group of volunteer workers from a nearby organic farm swoop into laughter; their waistlength dreadlocks and patchwork trousers mark them as incomers as surely as their English accents.

Rab climbs onto the stage, turns to us and beams, then faces the hall which has suddenly hushed in anticipation. In a clear voice, he says simply, 'The Gay Gordon'. People are expecting this. They hurry to form sets. They know what to do. Eileen counts quietly 'two, three, four', and I fall headlong in love with a lonely, liquid, Galway hornpipe.

It's later - perhaps an hour, perhaps much less. The music is a wind rollicking through my heart and soul. Grace notes flick unbidden from my fingertips and the hall is a whooping, stamping, birling, whirling, swirling, skirling rainbow.

Glossary

auld – old

birl - spin

bunnet - bonnet, soft flat hat

craic - chat

dandered - wandered

trig - neat, tidy