Bagpipes

Wamperwamp. 

That's the sound that bagpipes make. It's true. I have it on good authority: it's what I dreamt. And I wrote it down the moment I woke up so I wouldn't get it wrong.

So "wamperwamp" it is, whatever else you think it might be.

I have often thought about the absurdity of the bagpipe. Firstly, it's not the least bit musical. Unless, I presume, you have a penchant for wamperwamp ballads. Which I most decidedly do not. Secondly, bagpipes are impossibly hard to play because you have to force a ridiculously large volume of air down the tiniest of inlets using that most ineffective of pumps; the human mouth. At the same time, you have to try to do yourself an injury by actually forcing that air back down your throat by squeezing the bag with your arm. Meanwhile you twiddle your fingers on a series of randomly drilled holes that change the wamperwamp pitch from merely painfully squeaky to instantly madness-inducing.

What then of the structure of said "instrument"? In essence it consists of an overgrown, hollowed-out haggis wrapped in a tartan so it doesn't look overly testicular and a series of recorder-type wooden tubes that you can either put in your mouth or grip in your hand, adding yet more barely concealed sexual innuendo.

And to complete the imagery, it makes a sound as if you were attempting to imitate Louis Armstrong using a flaccid penis. Ergo wamperwamp.

No wonder bagpipes are ascribed to the Scots, a people so weird that they don't wear underwear under their overwear.

I once knew a guy who played the bagpipes. No, I didn't. I made that up. Nobody knows anybody who plays or ever played the bagpipes. It's a legend. An urban myth. The kind of thing you tell your ex-girlfriend to try to win her back when you drunk-dial her after a night out with your mates. The kind of thing someone in one of those preposterous Disney movies would do. The kind of thing you might think when going into a McDonald's expecting to buy food.

Why? Because bagpipes are a joke. A laugh. A figment of our collective, Bambi-indoctrinated imagination. Like apple pies that come from America. Or hamburgers invented in Hamburg. Or sardines that come from Sardinia. Or turkeys that originated in Turkey. Or germs from Germany. Oh no: that last one's correct.

Wamperwamp, I say. In my best non-German accent.