| aughintober, northern ireland

The twenty-eleven season started off, not with but(for me anyway) buzzing of my usual alarm clock, but with my dad coming in, and telling me to get my arse out of bed, i'd slept in! Understandable, when you take into consideration that 'Hassin's House of Flags' was one flag short (Canadian), and had to spend all the previous night forcing my Girlfriend to sew one, which she did a great job at (Thanks Lynda!).

So with the flags packed, and my uniform on I headed to Dungannon Park to start off the PIpe Band season. Dubious weather greated us on the park, but it was great to see all the old faces again, and catch up on what's been going on over the off season! With capes on, it was an unusually late start for Team APB due to the rain, but our roster of old and new did themselves proud, keeping calm and putting in a decent performance, coming third overall :-)

But the real fun was last night, at the first annual 'International Piping in the Park' competition. Unfortunately the night had a bad start with theifery of one of our flags, but that was soon forgotten as the International Piping Community decended upon Dungannon Park to cheer on their competitors. Having Canada, England, Northern Ireland, the United States of America, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland represented brought a truely international feel to the event, with the competitors doing their best to outdo eachother. Best costume of the night has to go to Donald McPhee from the States (pictured above), who went out to show off his national pride, donning not one, but three american flags! Most interesting Insturment on the night, though had to go to Ronan from SLOT, who played the box along with Kevin Rodgers (ROI)! 

So, after 2 hours of brilliant, world class music judges Gary Watterson and David Caldwell had a difficult task on their hands to pick a winner. After much deliberation they decided that Gordon McCreedy had done enough to win the MSR Section, with Donald McPhee winning the Entertainment Secion (I think the large shouts of USA, USA! helped!).  The overall winner, though had to be Gordon McCreedy who played just superbly!

Photo's will be up when I can find my camera!