17th January 2002

Last night I had a dream about The Bastard Sons of Burns.

Everything was hooked up and ready and we got rolling. I introduced us and launched into some one-pager. I was halfway through it when this deafening noise started and the entire audience looked towards the door.

A piper had come in and begun to play his bagpipes, drowning me out. He was an unimposing, vaguely unhappy looking man with a droopy moustache. He looked very uncomfortable. I stared at him and he stopped playing. I resumed my story, but within a couple of sentences he started up again, drowning me out.

This time we confronted him and he stopped again. He whinged in a kind of jobsworth way that he had been booked to play at this event and he had to do it or he wouldn't get paid. No amount of reasoning would get him to play in the intervals and shut up while we were reading.

It was Stef who eventually worked out what was going on. 'Aw, I bet it's my mum's hired him,' he said. 'It's exactly the kind of thing she'd do.'

- Gav.