Davey & Isobel’s Story

Davey & Isobel’s Story

“Music is something in our blood. We play
music all the time.”

“I started to think, ‘Well the weathers nice, I play music, I have a lot of things to offer. I play bagpipes.’ So I was up and down the street, in the kilt, bagpipes. The guy across the road from me plays side drum in a pipe band. So then, there was me and him, playing side drum with me up and down the street. His daughter was a student at a Scottish dancing school… I had the speaker with the music playing through it and she would do wee demonstrations of her Scottish dancing.”

“It was really well attended; everybody was out, the whole street was out. The girl across the road… did drawings in chalk all the way up the road. The elderly couples were sitting out. It was like getting out, it was like getting out for a night out. It was a great atmosphere, because people were bringing out chairs and tables and ah, you know, wee bottles of wine or drinks, people had cups of tea and they were all sitting. We had elderly couples up dancing.”

“Then, of course, it went from there to we played for old folks, we played for hospitals, different things. So we went down and played outside the old folks’ home in the garden because we could go outside.”

“That brought so much to people… we’d never done that before in that capacity, so we ended up everywhere right up to Christmas. Christmas too, we… played outside places and we set up the lights, we had Christmas Carols. It was a great atmosphere; we felt like we were putting something back in and people really enjoyed it.” – Davey

“I think the reception from everyone in the street was just so overwhelming, you know, that we thought, ‘Aye, we’re actually really on to something here’… It was so lovely because people actually got dressed up. That really struck me. They actually, ehm, you know, they put on dresses… and there was one guy, he was wearing a kilt and he came out and, and it was, it was really quite moving; really quite moving.”

“So the street came out; we got to know our neighbours. You know, there was this group chat goin’ on, we were playing music quite regularly, people were coming out into their gardens… Even now you know, Davey and I… we sit out in the front garden, cause the sun hits there, and people are going by and they’re like, “Hi Davey, hi Issy.”… We wouldn’t have had that before Covid, you know. And people were shopping for… elderly neighbours and… just a real sense of kind of looking out for each other which, I think, was something I have not experienced since I was the age of 10, which was a long, long time ago… echoes of a time gone by.” – Isobel