THE TARTAN MENACE
Hello, I'm Roland Trotsky. I'm forty-eight, I live in St Ives and I've got a
pet hamster called Nigel - but that's enough of the biographical chit-chat.
Let's talk about bagpipes - more specifically, let's talk about how we're
going to get them off our streets.
You may have noticed, perhaps whilst out shopping in your local high street,
certain tartan-flavoured people soliciting money in return for blowing into an
instrument that resembles a bag of spanners with a series of vacuum cleaner
attachments sticking out of it. Well, firstly, these people are usually not
Scottish. Secondly, although bagpipes are commonly described as a musical
instrument, I'll be damned if I can think of anything less musical than
the toneless, spleen-rending whine produced by one of these accursed things.
Have you ever heard a tune being played on one? ...Yes? ...Liar! A tune has
rhythm, it has structure, it has... it has... well, it has a tune. The only
sound you will ever hear emanating from those bloody pipes is a depressing,
droning, monotonous groan, which beats irritatingly on your eardrums for
five and half minutes then just suddenly stops for no apparent reason.
Not that I have a problem with them stopping. No, no, not at all - I find
the sudden cessation of their God-awful racket a blessed relief. I have a
problem with them being allowed to start in the first place. Who told these
irritating bastards that they're welcome in our shopping malls and town
centres? Where do the buggers come from? Is there a minibus that deploys
them at strategic locations early on a Saturday morning, and do they meet up
afterwards for a debriefing in which they discuss how many old ladies they've
scared out of their wits, and how many children have been reduced to tears?
Imagine what would happen if I decided to put on a skirt and stand on a street
corner, blowing into a bag of offal and wailing uncontrollably. I'll tell you
what would happen - I'd be dragged around the back of the Co-
op by the filth
and given a swift kicking, that's what. Yet these tartan bastards can get away
with it in the name of 'culture'. You know most of them come from Coventry,
don't you? Oh yes. Few of them have ever been further north than Bradford.
Here are a number of other things that you may not know about bagpipes:
* Bagpipes are played by repeatedly spitting down the neck. They fill up
rapidly and there is a serious possibility that they might burst and cover
the surrounding crowd in phlegm.
* Most bagpipes enter the country illegally. This means that they have
not been quarantined or given the necessary vaccinations. As a result,
many of them are carriers of serious diseases, like whooping cough, scrofula
and rabies.
* A set of bagpipes can hold enough oxygen to allow its owner to remain
submerged for up to eight hours. Pipers in the English Channel frequently
harass marine life and are a constant danger to shipping.
* Many bagpipers eat babies when they think no one is looking.
Puts a different complexion on it, doesn't it? At this point you're probably
asking yourself why such a dangerous piece of kit is allowed to be paraded
around our streets, unlicensed and unchecked. This question becomes all the
more pertinent when you consider the history of the instrument. You see,
when the Jacobites came marching down from the Highlands the during the
eighteenth century, it was the pipers who met the English first - not as you
might expect, in order to play them a traditional Scottish ditty and sell them
a tin of shortbread. Oh no. They were sent in first to scare the living
out of them. And it worked, the English quite rightly thought that whoever
was capable of wringing such a dreadful, tortured squeal out of anything -
be it living or dead - was clearly somebody to be reckoned with. Of course,
as soon as the Redcoats developed earplugs, the Highlanders were sunk, but
even so, during the height of battle, whenever an English soldier happened
to glance up and see that dreadful tartan sack he was struck with mortal fear.
Major General Barmy Phipps takes the law into his own hands:
The point is, a set of bagpipes is not a musical instrument at all - it's a
weapon. And a pretty devastating one at that. In recent times, scientists
have discovered that the precise frequencies generated by the pipes has a
direct effect on the human nervous system, and prolonged exposure is likely to transform anyone unfortunate enough to be in range into a gibbering cabbage.
It should be noted these selfsame scientists were careful to examine
the pipes under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, taking every
precaution to shield themselves from the hazardous effects, using specially
constructed soundproof booths and industrial strength ear protectors..
And yet, despite the proven dangers, the damn things are still allowed on
our streets, causing mayhem and distress to harmless shoppers. It must be
stopped, before someone gets hurt.
That's why I am spearheading a campaign to get these nasty and malicious
instruments of torture decommissioned. If you'd like the join the battle to
keep this unholy racket off our streets, write to us at the following address:
We Want to Stop These Bloody Bagpipes
112 Tartan Avenue
Sao Paulo
And then, once every last one of the blasted things has been destroyed,
we're going to make a start on banjos.