Just a little magic moment on our recent training camp for Taiko...

After several hours of banging away on the Japanese drums, conversing in English, pidgin English and pidgin Japanese and enjoying carefully scheduled, highly structured group activities, I retired to the dorm. Looking forward to a sleep such as last year's open dorm would not provide and smiling smugly at the thought of the 'couple room' of two bunks and a door to close, I ambled away from the mess hall.

Brushing my teeth in the over-lit communal bathroom I found myself humming to someone's relaxing harp music tape. Then the music stopped and picked up again where it left off. It was not a tape - it was someone playing a real harp somewhere in the building.

I found the harp player. She was sitting in her pink pyjamas looking as clean and rosy as a lass of yore. I had made her acquaintance earlier in the day. I asked if I could stay a while and listen, and she was fine with it.

So with my ears ringing, the moths batting the yellow light bulbs outside and the sounds of Japanese women's conversation down the hall, I was treated to a Gaelic song accompanied by a mid-sized harp. There was something so right about the contrast between these different kinds of music and language in the one place.