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Friday 3 February 2012

Ashbourne, Empire Ballroom


Our annual Moody Food jaunt down to Ashbourne for their Pipe Band's Highland Fling. Luckily it was on the Friday as the heavy snow on Saturday would almost certainly kept us at home and we would have missed the fab tatties and neaps. Thanks to Rob from No Left Ear for being a roadie for the night.

The ballroom is one of my favourite halls and walking into it always feels like you are stepping back into another age with its dark wallpaper and art nouveau chandeliers dripping down from the domed ceiling. It first opened in 1912 as a cinéariety (a new word to me) where live variety acts would perform between the films and then converted to a ballroom in 1960.

The programme for the night.

The Cock o' the North / 100 Pipers
Cutting Bracken Strathspey (fiddle solo)
Ashbourne and District Pipe Band
The Gay Gordons
A Highland Welcome
Midnight on the Water / Waltz Vienna
The Dashing White Sergeant
The Eightsome Reel
St Bernard's Waltz
Ashbourne and District Pipe Band
Address to the Haggis
Supper of haggis, neaps and tatties accompanied by Jonathan and Jessica Whilock on Uileann and Small Pipes
The Siege of Delhi / The Earl's Chair
The Ashbourne Fling
Pipe Major James Dungavel (pipe solo)
Prize Draw
Drops of Brandy
The Cumberland Reel
The Dashing White Sergeant
Auld Lang Syne
Awa Hame





















Empire Wallpaper.