As I write this, I am sitting out in my back garden enjoying Belladrum Festival and some of its many fabulous delights. Sadly, due to Covid-19, it’s not the real thing this year but a virtual version renamed Tartan Home Festival and it’s just the slice of summer fun and music that’s needed to get August going! Having played at Belladrum many times with our band Dorec-a-belle and Davy Cowan’s Stormchasers, missing only one for my sister-in-law’s wedding on Bella weekend, the t

Is there anything more heart-warmingly lovely than playing music with your children? As a mum who loves nothing more than duetting with my teenage son - my piano to his pipes or my accordion to his piano - I would suggest there’s little to beat it. Sharing our musical passions with our youngsters and encouraging them to learn, so that they too will have the joy of music in their lives, is not an easy road for a parent to take though. It requires work, effort, dedication, not

Charles Dickens’ novel ‘The Tale of Two Cities’ opens with the well-known lines, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope’, and although his story contrasts London and Paris during the French Revolution, those words have such resonance today! With everyone in lockdown, the economy ground to a halt and only those in front-line and essential work out there keeping the NHS and care settings going, the food chai