Thanks for hooking this one up, Carol! The next instalment is now ready for publication.

I had noticed a beautiful fiddle that Eric (Not the Viking) Twigger brought to our Sloop session, which I played very scratchily on one occasion. I was jawing with Eric on the telling bone, and he asked if I'd given Bill his fiddle back. I said he hadn't, but I felt he'd called last orders, and Eric amazed me by offering to lend me his wonderful violin. And it is a violin, too, as it didn't like my slidey clutching when we first got together (which was one week ago). Of course, I fell in unconditional love with it straight away, and wondered how this beautiful friendship would end. It yielded to my uncouth, un-classical demeanour. After a trip to Liverpool, which culminated with a drunken rendition of 'Leaving Of' on Paradise Street at 3am, I returned home with ill-fitting brain that alcohol induces, and immediately pounced on the fiddle case for some therapy. I opened it to find a birthday card from my wife that said "It's yours, happy fiddling!"

It is a wondrous instrument, and I have had discourse with Sorcha on the matter of its fake label, creditting the work to some geezer in Cremona, Anno 1721, but it has raised my game already, and promises to take me much further.

Thanks Eric, and thanks Missus. I am blessed.

Skipjack