Days like this

Taylor Edwards

So I'm sitting in a restaurant in Ypres town centre eating chicken and chips and sitting with friends at the end of my second Battlefields Trip. Sitting at the table beside the stairs, we could see everything around us and it was during this I noticed the large Victorian clock suddenly approach 6.3Opm and the thought and feeling that I would in half an hour have to get ready to put my kilt on. You see in two hours I was going to be piping in an event that happens every night, yet it is surrounded by utter uniqueness and unpredictability each night. Not in the sense anything could happen, but you don't know how many people will turn up, who wilt be taking part and even how long it will last. That is the Menin Gate ceremony and for over 80 years, the ceremony has been taking place with the assistance of Ypres Fire Brigade and several inputs by Commonwealth Commissions. What an honour, yet what nerves!

For such a prestigious and important event, I got changed extremely quickly and in clumsily, not in the way I was dressed, but the way I had to get changed into my kilt. Yes I admit, I got changed for one of the proudest moments of my life in a toilet. A bloody toilet! After getting ready, I was outside and in a midst of looks at some stupid Belgian saying in his language, "Hey look at that guy in a skirt", I swear I'll kill somebody some day for calling a kilt a skirt, we proceeded to head to the bus. I cannot really remember what Mr Turner said on the bus but it wasn't relevant as two years ago to the day I had heard it anyways and I wasn't going to be standing in the side, I was going to be piping at the ceremony. Man talk about nerves. live played in front of hundreds of people, going to be playing at all the major Pipe Ban events next year in one of the countries top bands yet I was, well let me be honest here, crapping myself over playing a simple tune in front of only a few people.

The memory and happiness of the experience starts at the point I blew my pipes up in tuning and a perfect sound came through the drones and the chanter felt comfy. Man that was a relief I tell you! And off to the Menin Gate to meet the secretary, little did I know his importance, he had an MBE! What was I about to do? I tell you, do something nobody I will perhaps ever meet has done, something no person will perhaps ever do again from my school. All of this in the year I'm Head Boy! How better can one represent their school on an international stage? A proud moment that will carry with me until they shut the box on top of me you could say.

As I was introduced to the Buglers, the nerves did begin to hit. I would not call them nerves, more a sense of wanting to get it over and done with. The Buglers were all great guys, they were very polite and extremely funny. One of them, the head bugler, was a very colourful character and quite witty and funny. This comforted me as such as I was relatively unsure how to take these men in the sense would they be serious or very easy to get on with? In the midst of one bugler telling a joke we were called to our posts and in this it was serious face and time to do myself proud.

All I can remember from the ceremony is getting my pipes up and with such relief at that playing "Flowers of the Forest" and as it echoed hearing only my pipes and nothing else. Silence surrounded me like the eeriness that surrounded the soldiers we were remembering and as I finished wreaths were laid by many groups including two by the school I go to. The ceremony came to an end and by the time I realised to march off first was me I could make out the Bugler behind telling me to step off, once i had marched a mere ten yards I had finished. Relief, pride and utter happiness came over me. Eight months of it in my mind an alas it was over. I had done my bit for the school an the memories will always be with me.

It can be said with utter support that its these experiences, moments of achievement and then the memories that will forever shape your life I believe. Its the times we live in that dictate our memories, all the small things and big things in a day. A day like this.