Bothy

He is interested in the now of the bog, what we do with and about it today, understanding this deeply through the stories of the communities he works with.

Of the many astonishing photographs he has taken, there is one that remains in my mind, taken as part of the Bog Bothy Project.

It is of a beige empty room once occupied by workers.

In the middle of the frame hangs a thick brown Czech shirt on a hook, fixed to a wall.

I am reminded that in architecture you have to act right now, with the people around you, working together, listening to each other's stories for the past for sure, giving time to the worries and ideas about what next for the places in which we live and love.

And the bogs are no different.

The yellow bog bothy is now part of a bog building tradition, one that was always responsive to the needs of the time, national economic priorities and the real lives of the peatlands communities.

Times change though, and we cannot know what the future holds for these landscapes, not fully, not yet.

We found his camp, I said low.

He was living rough inside the Bothy.

Scientific diaries, chemical drums, something radio-controlled.

Colwell's jaw tensed, lips thinning.

The actual night.

Ridley,

moving by pre-dawn dark through the Bothy, using his makeshift radio and the known test frequencies to send the overdrive signal through the hives.

Hall, dosed on the neurotoxin herself by accident, not realizing the venting schedule had been tampered with.

Thank you, Ailie, and huge thanks also to my sponsors, R.G. Hardie Bagpipes.

And indeed, we shall be hearing from them in just a little while in the person of Alistair and Isla, who, as I think I mentioned, paid me a visit here to the Bothy.

Oh, it must be a few weeks ago now, maybe a month.

But since we've been covering live events for the past four weeks, three weeks of the RASSE Restitution, and before that, the Captain John McClellan Memorial Recital Contest, this is the first chance we've had to bring you that chat.

And that album is Bows and Drones.

Now, if you join me regularly here on EYP, you will certainly know the name and the music of Bridgie Heimball.

She's been a guest here, she's been at the Bothy and we play her recorded music often because she is one of the hardest working musicians I know.

She's always on tour or recording or collaborating and it's all excellent stuff and she's really taking the small pipes in particular in her own direction.

Young man, if ye pass through Braes O'Lochber, see by the loch side ye come to the bothy of Topernaflysich.

End of chapter one.

Chapter two of The Bothy of Topernaflysich by Arthur Clough.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Morn, in yellow and white, came broadening out from the mountains.

And middle after Adam paced up and down repeating, over and over, unconscious, the phrase which Hope had lent him.

Dancing at Bullock, you say? In the castle, with Lady Maria? End of chapter four.

Chapter five of The Bothy of Topor Nafluisich, by Arthur Clough.

I knew you weren't far away.

Come in, come into the Bothy.

It's great to see you.

It's very warm here today.

When we talked, I had just had a fray, just gotten here, just settled into the cabin.

It's the Bothy by the Lake, or Bothy by the Fjord.

And Giannis, who helped check me in, I said, he asked, well, what can I bring you? I said, well, a bottle of whiskey, of course.

So he came up and he filled up a bottle.

I hope you've had a good week and that all is well with you and yours.

It's a fine sunny day, well at the moment anyway, here at the Bothy.

There's a fair wind up, mind you, so things can change pretty quickly and it was lashing with rain not too long ago, but I see a blue sky.

out of the skylight there and anyway we'll take that for now lots to pack in music wise this week coming right up but for now welcome to episode 163

He went to London to busk for a while in the early 1970s with his guitar, singing rock songs, but had a go at the pipes there, realised that that was a bit more lucrative.

And so his main professional piping career began.

He went back to Dublin and He joined the Bothy Band and was a mainstay of them through the second half of the 1970s.

And it was great just a few years ago that I managed to see the Bothy Band in concert when they had one of their reunion tours.

Yeah.

Um, so it's a bit of a process and a learning process and, y- you know, there's, there's certain images, for instance, like the Rifle and Bothy.

Mm.

Sparks, which, uh, was completely unplanned, um, and was one of those really sort of go home and look at the images and wow moments.