Armada Hotel

The event that started it all

by avanutria

"Six world-wide whistlers in Ireland!"

My huge trip to Ireland was triggered by two things really - a desire to attend Irish language school in Ireland, and the famous Willie Clancy music festival. Several of my whsitling cohorts form around the world decided to take the plunge too, and we all ended up meeting in Miltown for the week's events. Great fun was had by all!

From left to right, the people in the photo are: Eldarion, Singapore; Peter, Ireland; myself, America; Azalin, Canada; Jack, America (California); and Martin, London.

"Standing in for the professionals"

At Willie Clancy week was a guy by the name of John Ryan, the author of those little yellow "how to play whistle" books. He was selling whistles but really wanted to have a chance to wander around and see things (and get something to eat!) every so often. So we made an arrangement - I took his place playing tunes and selling whistles for a couple of hours on a couple of days, and at the end of my stint he gave me a free whistle of my choice from his stock.

Naturally I spent a great deal of time trying every single whistle he had and hiding the one I wanted!

"How many whistlers can you fit in a cab?"

Our answer is six plus the driver. You can't see it but we had five in the back seat, and Martin up front trying to take the photo. Our driver was quite a comedian, and I think we had more fun in the cab than we did at the session we were travelling to! This was when SARS was in the headlines, and our cabbie suggested that if we couldn't get any space at the session we should have our two comrades from Singapore loudly discuss how they'd had a terrible cough lately..