Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Rockin' In The Hebrides
by Russell Turner - 15:48 on 04 August 2016
It’s summer. It’s August. It’s raining. The Black Isle Show will have been a moist affair today. Yesterday was not as bad but still inclement enough to have put a bit of a damper on the Skye Highland Games at Portree. Maybe that’s why the community centre, venue of the after-games dance, was only lightly filled at the beginning of festivities – most people were home changing into dry clothes.
Spared of the need to transport our PA, City Limits needed just two cars to move personnel, one hanger-on, and instruments the 110 miles from Inverness to Port Rìgh where, after a lengthy soundcheck overseen by the local provider of amplification services, we sought out and eventually found our accommodation at Rhu an Dunain, cunningly hidden outside town at the end of several twisty roads.
After a warm welcome at the former B&B, pressed into service by event organisers because Skye was fully booked, we dumped bags and returned to Portree for food, Sam and I keen to sample the delights of the Taste of India – a venue embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the rest of the group. It turned out to be a fine choice, with food just as good as its sister restaurant outside Kyleakin.
Fed and watered, or wined and dined according to inclination, we strolled across to the community centre to discover Sheepshank Redemption well into their ceilidh-based set but being mostly ignored by the smattering of punters inside the hall. The lack of enthusiasm continued after we took their place for our first set, but having been warned that this was the usual state of affairs we didn’t worry.
More people had arrived in time for the ceilidh band’s second set, which featured much unskilled ethnic dance in the body of the hall, and even more people by the time we concluded the evening with our second set which ended at one o’clock with an enthusiastic audience shouting for more. They should have got there earlier.
We’re out again on Friday night, back at our favourite venue of Johnny Foxes, and with fingers crossed that not everyone has gone to the nearby Belladrum music festival. With luck I’ll have recovered from Hebridean travel by then.
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