When the World Knows Your Name, Aila Coull

Today's tiltle was supposed to be imaginatively called "Tales from T in the Park - Part 2". However when writing this magical story, a verse from a Deacon Blue song "The World Is Lit By lightning" popped into my head, hence the change.

As is my want I'll return to the significance of the song later, but for now let's start at Part 2.

For those who have never been to a music festival, there's a knack to it and one I'm happy to share.

First of all you need to do a bit of homework in advance which involves finding out about the various "housing schemes" or "campsites" as you would know them. You see just like there are good and bad "housing schemes", the same applies to campsites.

At T in the Park these areas are identified by colours such as Red, Green, Purple, Orange and Pink and if you find yourself in the wrong one, you're weekend could be completely ruined by some rowdy and noisy young 'uns and personally, I'm a bit old for the "no sleep till Monday" brigade.

At Balado this means you stay away from the Red and Green zones, particularly the former . . . . it's a war zone. So we picked Pink on the basis that it wasn't surrounded by other camping areas.

Pink had a nice long fence next to it, which means if you get an edge slot people can't hem you in. So we headed for one of those edges and pitched our four tents along a single line, which meant we all had "open space".

This is vital as when you're entertaining you need enough room for your camping chairs, so you can enjoy a wee refreshment with your pals, before heading into the main arena.

An alternative to the 'single line' approach is the circle of wagons, or tents approach which is a rookie mistake. Let me explain.

Imagine you put your tents in a circle with the objective of having the 'centre of the circle' as your 'refreshment' zone? So you get them all up neatly and as you stand back and look at your circle, you head inside to "furnish" your tent and while inside, the next batch of campers arrive, see your circle and think "perfect, that will do us" and proceed to put their tent in the middle of your circle. Epic fail.

With our tents in perfect order, we got out the goodies and given the scorching conditions, began to consume a cold beverage or two. It's at this point you start becoming very territorial or, snobbish as you start vetting people as they approach and if you don't fancy the look of them, you do everything in your powers to make sure they don't camp next to you.

You start by snarling at them, or shouting at each other in the hope they don't like you. You even find yourself saying things like "excuse me pal, ah don't want tae put you aff, but three other tents tried to camp there and security moved them as it's a fire access point, just thought you'd want to know".

It's shocking behaviour, but your there for four days, so you like to be choosy about your neighbours :-)

With our first night over, we congratulated ourselves with our "choice", however early next morning, more arrived and we had to go through the grunting and growling process all over again.

After an hour or so all the spaces were filled, bar one that is and it was the space right opposite us at the fence, one we weren't giving up without a fight, however when we saw what we thought were too, young, defenseless lassies, humfing their heavy tent and camping gear and looking for a spot we acquiesced and decided to let them have the "final" slot.

I say acquiesced, but if truth be known Stevie didn't fancy telling one of them no, well either of them actually as they looked like dirty fighters :-)

These two "wee lassies" turned to be perfectly adept at putting up a tent, so before Stevie could put on his top to hide the peely wally look and offer his 'manly' help , the tent was up, camping chairs out, lipstick on and drinks poured, turns out the wee lassies were T in the Park veterans!!

Our neighbours, pictured above turned out to be Kirtsy Anderson, pictured right and Mellisa Gellaty, left and by luck or good fortune had exactly the same outlook as us when it came to music festival camping etiquette. Over a glass or two of 'camping' wine we established there would be no peeing up against the fence. No drugs. No litter and no loud music after 03:00 hours. They were the 'perfect' neighbours.

So we gabbed away for hours before heading off in different directions to see Friday nights line up.

We were all up early on Saturday morning, lassies at 06:00 to head for the showers and lads at 08:00 when the lassies came back and by mid morning we were all scrubbed up and raring to go again.

As you can see from the picture above I was bedecked in one of the three versions of Kiltwalk t-shirt I had with me and it was this that led all us to realising we had a very 'special' connection.

Kirtsy, out of the blue, asked "what Kiltwalk did you take part in?" and I gave my stock answer of "Glasgow, which one did you walk?"

At first she looked kind of sheepish and said "well I didnae actually walk one, but what it is, is, there was this wee girl . . . . "

Now at this point my mind started sifting through "wee girls" near Bridge of Earn, close to Perth? to see if I knew who this wee girl might be, so in my head I was thinking "it's Summer, cause Cupar was close by".

But she then said "well actually it's my pals, pal . . . . . " and in that instant I had complete clarity of thought and before she said another word I said, "it's Ailla, isn't it".

It was at that point Kirsty looked at me with that "how did you know" look, as did everyone else for that matter.

Truth is I didn't know but for some reason I just knew what she was going to say.

Perhaps it was the fact that I had my Kiltwalk and Aila Coull wristbands intertwined on my wrist, or just a lucky guess, who knows.

At this point I was unusually lost for words, so ran in the tent and grabbed my ACF hats and said "Aila, Aila Coull, this Aila" and she said "aye".

I then whipped out my phone and showed her the Blipfoto story of Aila looking all "lit up" with her dress on and she said "ah read awe them, cause I'm friends of Rachael and I see her Facebook etc, etc.

What's the chances, eh? In a country with a population of 5.2 million and at an event with 90,000 people and with a selection of multi coloured camp sites, Kirsty and Mellisa "just happened" to pitch their tent next to ours ?

Of course you know what happened next? I went into Kiltwalk overdrive about what Oor Kiltwalkers do and and how Aila and the ACF are close to our hearts and then I started shouting "Zoey picture, take a picture it's a great Blipfoto story".

Kirsty was then 'interviewed' and it turns out Kirsty's boss, Rachael, who is also her friend, owns a salon called Bliss. Rachael turnms out to be Rachael Cruickshank fae Buckieand a life long friend of Oor Kirsty McDonald, Aila's Aunty and Sine's sister and Rachael and Kirsty (Anderson) did fundraising via the salon for The Kiltwalk and ACF. Brilliant, eh!! I was exhausted just writing it all down.

I know what you're all thinking "eh Ian, did you close the deal?" and I think the answers "yes" because as we all left on Monday morning, both Kirsty and Mellisa promised to take part in a Kiltwalk next year and walk as part of Aila's Amblers and lassies, I ken where you live now, so no going back on your word.

I hope you liked today's Blipfoto story as much as I liked writing it.

So let's finish with that verse from "When the World is Lit by Lightening" which goes like this:

"Seraphim and Cherubim
Skies full of gold dust
Moonshine and starlight
Pockets full of rainbows"

A verse where "skies full of gold dust" just make me think of Aila and all her little pals darting in and out of our world.

But more than that, it's the line "When the world knows your name" which got me thinking that "you're never too far from someone who has heard of The Kiltwalk" and people who know the name of a very special little girl.

Her name is Aila Coull and when the world knows your name Aila, you'll never be forgotten.