I come from Paisley and learned to play the pipes there in 1956 or thereabouts. What I did was to get myself up to the Gleniffer Braes, just above Paisley, and walk up and down that lonely moor road, practicing for hours on end. A motor car stopped once and the driver was a local butcher who was also a piper. He gave me a few tips and I learned a lot, especially to keep playing up there away from the Madding Crowd. I have since played all over the world, in big cities and in the wilds of Turkey and Yugoslavia and was always welcomed. The only hostility I remember encountering was in North England, at my (then) future in-laws' house. The father of my wife to be asked me to play the pipes in his garden and the neighbours complained! But, as Alex Campbell famously said when a dog pissed into his collecting cap when he was busking, 'we have our critics everywhere'.