Peter Phillips

Bagpipes in our baggage

These have been trying times for itinerant musicians

issue 02 September 2006

These have been trying times for itinerant musicians. Anybody who had already built up a dislike for the way airport staff are entitled to treat their customers would have found the recent situation testing to the point of phobia. To be fair, my fellow-citizens showed remarkable good humour in those endless and often directionless queues at Heathrow (our plane to Chicago took off six hours after I first presented myself at the terminal the other day); the staff were less accommodating, buffeted by conflicting and sometimes unjustifiable instructions, obliged to be inflexible and inclined to be stony-faced.

The restrictions on hand-luggage didn’t inconvenience us as much as some, since singers’ instruments go into the cabin whether the authorities like it or not. For instrumentalists the restrictions were sometimes disastrous. I read with sympathy of the plight of a Russian orchestra which had to return home days late by train because the insurance on their instruments required the players to keep them in sight at all times.

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