August 2007

Hi Everyone,

Well we've landed - we're finally all back home at Auld of Clunie after our July travels. Our cats Twilights and Hope, baby chics Honey and Chirpy (Mumbles sadly didn't make it), goats Rishlin and Paloma and our many hens and cockerels were looked after well in our absence by Lorna and Ann from ACE's (Animal Care and Exercise Service) http://www.aces06.co.uk/ I think our menagerie are looking forward to having all that attention again the next time we go away!

Caim and Al travelled to Yorkshire as planned in the middle of July. Al stayed warm and dry and had a blast recording several of his songs in Chris and Ian's Right Real Studios. He will be returning to the studio in September to hear a Gospel choir add harmonies to his tracks!

Jacynth and I were not so warm and dry walking through muddy fields and cow pats to reach a set of standing stones in the Yorkshire countryside to film part of our DVD. Despite the weather conditions it was a lot of fun though. I especially enjoyed singing to an audience of curious swallows ducking and diving around the stones. We'll let you know when the DVD is ready.

Caim also travelled to London for a day at the end of the week for Jacynth's audition for the Council for Music in Hospitals. Jacynth introduced the audition panel to her hand puppet, Sidney the performing snake, and we were in - especially when Sidney tried to take a bite from the lunch belonging to a man on the panel. We've heard since that our audition was successful.

Before and after Yorkshire I travelled to the Isle of Skye for two week long Gaelic song workshops. The first with Cathy Ann McPhee and Kathleen MacInnes and the second with Christine Primrose. I now have 72 Gaelic songs to look at over the winter and choose from for our Caim repertoire and for next year's concert with Margaret Gillies Brown. We worked hard!

I'll be catching up with Ciaran again at some hospital concerts in Glasgow and Dundee this week. Check out his myspace site - www.myspace.com/ciarandorrismusic for his latest gossip.

Our other myspace sites are: www.myspace.com/heatherponting (Heather Innes)
www.myspace.com/celticcaim (Caim)
www.myspace.com/Alponting (Al)

Till next time...

Heather