Marching music definitely has a military background and today celebrates all variations of "Music on the Move"...all the dedicated musicians and performers of diverse styles and backgrounds.
Now me, I am not an aficionado of band music, in any of its various forms, but then I am not a team player...While I can admire the skills required, it is simply not on my favoured genre list.
There is obviously a lot of discipline and skill required in being able to not only play your musical instrument well enough, but also to march in the required and often intricate choreographed routines while doing so and wearing the required band regalia proudly and with style...one would have to love it!
Tim loves pipe bands...lives for replays of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, has downloaded many marching tunes for his ipod, (the family insist he listens with headphones, NOT speakers). He used to be quite the groupie for our local Tasmanian Police Pipe, and Army Bands, during his bus days when he might have taken the chaps of either team about the state for their local appearances. He really does enjoy the music, so today I decided this bagpipe focused inchie is for Tim...(insert drum roll here)...
Bagpipes, along with almost every other musical instrument, engender many, often rather cruel, jokes...here are a couple I like...
Anyway, the gift was my very first grown up camera...a Canon EOS 1500D (all of which means little to me yet, I am just copying the name off the camera as I write this blog post. I have much research and reading to do...). Sarah also left me her larger lens which I have been playing with a little this morning, in order to try and capture some images of "our" birds...
By a strange quirky inevitability, this morning, for the first time, three magpies landed on our rail, as I stepped out onto the balcony. I had no need of any sort of distance lens...there they all sat, within reach, walking back and forth, staring me down, willing me to bring breakfast, and singing away, as they do...I managed a few pics, anyway, gave them a little treat or two on the lawn, not the balcony...I do not want them coming too close, (not toilet trained, if you get my meaning), and then spent a little time, far too much really, fiddling with some filters in Photoshop...such fun.
Firstly when my favourite framers in Bellerive retired, and secondly when the local Sorell business I took the little treasures and the frames to before Christmas last year, did nothing.
He couldn't remember what the job I gave him entailed, despite two further phone calls and a further visit to the shop over about six weeks.
Tim finally went in and asked to have the work returned and even that took two visits, as he had"misplaced" some of the bits...I was worried as one was an old painting done by my mother's great aunt that has great sentimental value.
When Tim finally managed to rescue them all, the second inchie frame, brand new and still in it's wrapping, had been left somewhere in water which had ruined the wood, swelling the frame and destroying the painted surface...I am, therefore, actively letting any of my acquaintances, who may require framing services, know of his demonstrated competence level.
I am back to doing it myself and need to sit and measure and place the pieces very carefully indeed...nothing looks worse to my eye than framed items that are slightly askew, when they are meant to be perfectly aligned.
Addit 5 hours later: it is completed! Still not perfect, but as neat as I can get it, which will just have to do. I realised at one point when I was fretting over the edge alignment of a couple of the inchies that the mount board mats I made for each inchie have been cut by hand with a ruler and Stanley knife...no way are they all perfectly square! After I realised that little fact, I stopped worrying.
Bye for now,
Di