My time in Edinburgh was one of the finest times of my life, because I enjoyed my work, and there was great music in the evenings. I went out three times a week to folk music sessions, which took place in a few of the local pubs, and met some really great musicians there, some lovely people. We’d go in and sit down in the pub at the beginning of the evening, have a drink, and would be chatting away when someone would get out their instrument and start playing. Then others that knew the tune they were playing would join in. Some people would play regularly in each pub, and there were always people passing through. The first session I went to I discovered by luck. I just went into the pub and saw that there were people playing, and once you’re in one session it’s easy to find out from the musicians the times and places of others. I really was a bad fiddle player at the time, but I tried to play a bit and listened a lot, and people were very kind to me and took me to lots of sessions. I’m not a great player at the moment, but I think I’ve improved a bit since then! I took a portable tape recorder with me and recorded, session by session, many tunes, and tried to learn some of them when I had some spare time. I learned a lot from listening and watching how others played – and there were some really talented players in Edinburgh at that time, like John Martin, for example. You can’t imagine how good some of the playing was. There were also people playing the mandolin and the flute, Irish pipes and guitars.
A lot of people from Northern Ireland, particularly from Donegal, used to come to the Edinburgh sessions, and they were a strong influence. There are some pubs where people play Irish music there, and some where people play Scottish music. There were always more people playing in the Irish sessions, maybe because Scottish music is usually played by a solo instrument, maybe with a guitar accompaniment, whereas in Irish music you often find five or six fiddles playing together, which is, I think, more exciting. Also, in the Scottish sessions, you’d very rarely hear any songs, which were more common in the Irish ones.
I wouldn’t have liked to live in Edinburgh forever, but I had a really fantastic time there and I was sad to leave. The time there was too short, even for our kids. The kids went to school there, and for our son it was the first time he’d been to school. They both picked up a strong Scottish accent!