Archive

Random Acts of Kindness

August 8, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

It was like a comical movie, where a farmer’s field or a very big sports field stands empty behind the sports facility. Once a year, that field comes alive with sports very different from the norm, and if the field ever plays to a music festival, there would not likely be many bagpipes played then.

Everybody comes; count on thousands of folk over the days of a weekend – volunteers being as helpful as they can be; the athletes getting their gear in order and preparing themselves to lift and throw heavy things and heave in the tug of war that are part of the Heavy Competitions. For this weekend, it was the World Championships. 

And the passionate musicians with their irresistible affection for their bagpipes – those whiny strange notes – tear your ear off if you’re not in love with them -we’ve heard the stories about the pipers who began as youths and could never be parted from their pipes again – “got it into his head that he had to play the pipes…”

The quick little drums with the busy, twirling sticks that beat them, hung from the neck of their drummers, everyone walking in unison. So it was hundreds of years ago when the pipes were blown with enough strangeness and whining to terrify superstitious invaders into believing something unworldly was coming….

Plenty of others are attending too, ourselves included with our objects of silver to hawk, like so many merchants filling the history books. We have travelled as did those ancient optimists, hoping to tempt the rich to part with some of their burden of money in trade for our shiny and valuable goods.

The tents are going up with the grunting of sweating men, this is their many-ith time in this summer of raising and lowering the same tents in fields rendered from green grass to pitiful dust, all to tempt the sales of whatever their masters are selling.

In all these Scottish Highland Games – there are festivals and then, there are Scottish festivals.

In the morning, they come, the very many visitors, who have heard of the powerful playing and the maybe weird abut very ancient customs of men showing their prowess to lift and shift heavy things – one man better than the rest eventually – in yore, chosen to guard and serve the king.

They bring their daughters and sons, some of them to compete for the lightness of foot, rising above the boards of the dance floor by the sheer force of the feet that lift them. Some dance for the skill of dancing around sharpened swords and they dance in unison as though connected at the soul, the sun shining on the brilliant colours of their tartans.

Still, it is just a trodden field of dust, stirred up when the pipers and drummers take their turns to march with their own bands, coming from far and wide, coming to one Scottish festival after another. The dust rejoices in release from the field to fall upon the hair and faces of all there. Once we wipe the sweat from our faces, the cloth is brown in our hands as proof.

Yet, we were three and not one of us was really strong or a man at all. Yet, we had a tent to raise that we could not by ourselves. A young man, with barely youthful muscle, managed to cast that first pin into the first hole at the top of one pole and together, we managed a canopy as good as the others. First the shelter, then the rest of tables and furniture to boast the silver and we stood on the morning of the first visitors to tell stories about the histories, the knowledge, the craft of the ancient Celts, from whom our silver draws its shapes and weavings.

Yet and yet. The mornings dawned and people came to this, one of the largest festivals in the land. They loved it all, cheering for the heavy athletes, clapping for the dancers, adoring all those bagpipers and drummers in the Main Field, who made little tremors in the ground around the field by playing Amazing Grace.

They did come to us and listen to us telling the tales from old books of an ancient race from whom very many of us are descended and they did pick and chose and take some of our silver with them to last them a lifetime.

Ah but, it was the morning after that two of us feared, the third of us being disabled, for we had no way of bringing down the tent, nor packing it into its bag. So, we drove with vague plans of finding those still there to help us – people are good like that, we consoled ourselves.

What a shock when we arrived: our tent was completely folded and ready to be packed and two men rushed from their canopy to us, shouting, “Hello! Hello!” and denying they had felled our tent. They were by our sides to aid in all the last moments of our needs to lift and pack and …wish us well.

Free of charge, once in a while comes a moment of a pure act of kindness.

Readers Comments (0)