First, if you don’t know what the Gaitherin is, here’s a description (if you do know you can skip this paragraph if you want). Basically, it’s a five day long music thing, you pick three instruments (or dance, voice or drama) and learn how to play them for a week and then at the end you do a concert. Mainly it’s based on Scottish music but dance is always hiphop, drums is usually African and electric guitar is always just rock music, with occasional random instruments added in. It sounds pretty shit but the focus really isn’t on the music at all, everyone that goes is a little bit insane and while there are a lot of really good musicians *cough*the Forsyths*cough* there are even more that are rubbish, like me. It is great fun, just impossible to describe.
Despite the fact the Gaitherin is one of my favourite things in the whole wide world I didn’t really want to go this year since it was my last ever one as a participant, and while I love youth working there too it’s just not the same, and I couldn’t bear the thought of never having another one. I was a bit worried it wouldn’t be as good as normal cause until 2 weeks before only 30-odd people had registered which is about half what we normally have. Like normal though, I was worrying about nothing. The Gaitherin was brilliant as normal and we 50-something people in the end. The only bad thing was how many regulars weren’t there. A lot of the 6th years from Huntly weren’t there and a few of the youth workers that have been there since I started couldn’t make it either. And Declan wasn’t there and he’s gorgeous and we missed him. The replacement clarsach tutors were great fun though, but just not the same (although I don’t know how well we would have coped with Declan there
). (For those who don’t know, a clarsach is a Scottish harp). And for some reason we didn’t seem to do a lot of the things we normally do. I only played one card game and it wasn’t even spoons, and we had a very half-hearted game of hide & seek/sardines but it was rubbish compared to normal.
Monday morning is always nice since I only see most people at Gaitherin things (although we’ve had more than usual this year and I had actually seen 6 of them the week before at the Aviemore thing). I had the added fun of trying to introduce Kimberley to everyone as well which was a bit mental, she was only there for the Monday though since she got ill (
) and couldn’t come for the rest of the week. Monday’s never the best day since the Gaitherin only really starts once you’ve got to SAGs (Sir Arthur Grant’s Centre, the place we stay over night) but it was made a lot better by the fact every so often me, Abi and Ally would catch each other’s eyes and get excited about going to see a certain Australian piano-playing musical comedian that night.
That did mean that I wasn’t staying residential until Tuesday night though so I spent the first two days being a bit sad that my last Gaitherin wasn’t as good as normal. Tuesday night was brilliant though, the girls spent roughly 3 hours getting ready and I don’t think anyone wore what they originally planned, or if they did they’d got changed once and changed back. 12 girls getting ready together is always fun. Then we all got onto the minibus and drove to Kemnay (and did some singing as is customary) for the Tutors’ Concert/Ceilidh; the highlight definitely being all the tutors swapping instruments and playing Valerie, including a rap section by MC, I wish I had a video of it. Then we got back to SAGs and everyone got into their pyjamas before having hot chocolate and toast and singing Michael Jackson songs. That was when it really started feeling like the Gaitherin.
I’m trying to remember all the other amazing bits, a lot of them seem to be from dance. The dinosaur impressions were great fun (especially when MC did it!), Bridget’s ballet was…interesting and Rosie is magic and can fly but wouldn’t teach me how (I know, so rude). And we had a little family. Me and Rosie did make pretty awesome keyrings for each other though. She has also be informed that at some point in her life she has to at least go out with someone called Jim, and ideally marry them.
Oh, and we won the dance off!

We broke SAGs this year though. On Wednesday night Molly kicked a hole in the wall and between then and Thursday morning Max managed to break the sink off the wall in the boys shower room. Hopefully we’ll be allowed back next time.
However, the complete highlight of the entire week was all the fun the last-year people got up to. There were 8 of us staying residential and on Thursday evening we were all told by Liam that we were having a meeting in his new office which was the drying room, also known as the sauna (his old one was the shower room but after Max that was out of the question, and me and Jean didn’t want to go in the stinky boy room again anyway), after lights out. Then we remembered that we got to stay up later on our last night so after sitting round talking rubbish with the youth workers for a bit and laughing at Chemo trying to moon us through the window when he and Liam were out having their bedtime bine (again, bine = cigarette), even though his ass didn’t reach the window even when he jumped up, we made our way to the sauna with Gregor (the only youth worker who was in on the plan) to arrange what we were doing the next day. Then we went back to our dorms and me and Jean denied the existence of any pranks and we all got into Bridget’s bed for a girly chat about Gaitherin crushes and then we made shadow puppets. And Jean did a remix of Callum Forsyth. Funniest. Thing. Ever.
The next morning Jean set an alarm for 6.30 with her phone on vibrate, then woke me up so we could both sneak out. When we got to the living room the boys had nearly finished though (we were told to meet there at 6.30 but they started at like 6
) so we stayed to chat for a bit then went back to bed. But they’d hung duct tape from the door frames, turned all the chairs into a maze, written “Last year
10000 ninja points
” on the tables in duct tape and, for the piece de résistance, got James on the breakfast bar, duct-taped him to it and then put his duvet and pillow on it and he pretended he didn’t know how he got there.


Friday was fun, but really sad. First near-cry of the day was sitting in the living room before we got on the bus thinking it could be the last time I was ever there (not by choice, but I don’t think they’ll appreciate the hole in the wall). Then on the bus someone said the boys thought we’d rated them all the night before so we made a list and rated them all on punchability, smelliness and marriage material (Mikey won mainly since if you married him you’d be a Massie and have Jackie and Tiggy for your sisters). Then the day basically went between me nearly crying about it being my last year and us all being stupid (I especially enjoyed getting Caitlin to wheel me through second choice dance on the trolley after I’d had to carry the clarsach the entire length of the school). I did manage to not cry at all until after the concert though, and then me and Jean both just broke down while all the boys acted as if we were idiots and said things like “But we can still help out”. Boys, honestly.
Oops, this is quite long. I’ll bullet point the bits I’ve left out…
-We spent pretty much all week singing the songs from third choice voice. To the point where every girl staying residential knew them, whether they did voice or not.
-No one who did 3rd choice voice can sing Help by the Beatles any more, we just sing the backing part.
-Jean can be a little bit scary when she sings vocal warm-ups seductively, although it is very funny.
-Elio shouldn’t be allowed to sing songs about growing up on the last day of my last Gaitherin, I only just didn’t cry at it.
-If Pablo wasn’t 13 I think every girl at the Gaitherin would have been in love with him. And I know someone called Pablo now!
-On the subject of Pablo, one of my favourite bits of the Gaitherin was waiting to go into the hall for the concert Pablo folded up his chewing gum wrapper really neatly and gave it to Jean, who unfolded it really carefully and said “Aww, there’s no declaration of undying love or anything on here”. So we gave it back to Pablo with a pen and he drew a heart on it and folded it back up.
-See, don’t you love him? Although apparently he “brings out the awkward” in Jean. She told him she was “master of sandwiches”
. I do love Jean.
-We all have a new motto too, No Folky Boys.