The bagpipe has a much lower aspect ratio than the piano. This must
necessarily derive from its structure and the use to which it is put in
daily life. Bagpipes allow the player to negotiate not only medieval
staircases, or modernist imitations, revivals of antique discomforts,
but the crags and moorscapes of battlefields where they can bring,
with their chanters and drones, a certain internal fortification to the
faint-hearted. It is well-known that our current monarch is daily braced
by the matutinal outpourings of these versatile aerophones, and so it
came as no surprise to me that my first meal on the LUCA, in the
august presence of the bearer of the MarkVI, should be heralded by
the blood stirring tones of this ancient instrument of near universal
application.
A feature of the LUCA that surprised me, and she was a vessel of
continuous surprise which, were I to have had a voice in the naming
of her, I would have proposed the adjunct title of La Sorpressa or Il
Stupore - the latter name having the grander connotations, for mere
Sorpressa alone could conceal something as mundane and
humiliating as a whoopee cushion, a humour concept I believe would
be alien within Il Stupore - was its acoustic inventiveness that
appeared to function independently of its substance and structure. I
have already noted its subtle replication of the Roman triclinium audio
surround, and now, with the arrival of the much anticipated
comestibles, we were being treated to an immersion in the distinctive
auspective of the labyrinthine interior of a superbly restored
Linlithgow Palace. The sounds, particularly the drone, positively
spoke the interior to us even revealing the texture of tapestries and
unrendered passageways. I had a sense of cavernous reaches, of
exotic dungeon conversions where the re-enactment of culinary
extravaganzas might be the more easily facilitated. The more distant
sounds featured as minute images as if taken from a book of hours,
and then as the instruments drew near, I became aware of the tread
of the bearers of heavily laden trestles formally mounting the naked
granite of untrodden staircases and marching the length of panelled
galleries.
'I cannot eat a meal without trumpets!' announced my successor, in a
tone which reminded me of the splendours of country house dining.
'Bagpipes are strictly a breakfast accompaniment!' This critical
observation I felt to be most unjust as she herself believed the meal
