The band’s fundraising drive for the local voluntary group Our Community Kitchen, which cooks and delivers hot meals to vulnerable people in the Haddington area, has reached more than double the target set.

At the start of the lockdown, band members decided to go out and play in their own gardens at 12.00 every Saturday to cheer people up in the difficult circumstances. However, these performances soon became the focus for a fundraiser for Our Community Kitchen and a JustGiving page was set up.

“Our Community Kitchen do amazing work for our community,” explained band chairman Ian Sutherland, “and we were keen to support them at this very challenging time. The decision was taken to use the Saturday garden performances to ask people to donate via our JustGiving page to the group, and the response has been amazing.

“We set a target of raising £500 and we have now received more than £1000, which is really superb and of huge help to Our Community Kitchen.”

The band has been helped along the way by other musicians, singers and dancers – locally and in different parts of the world – joining in the Saturday playing.

“It’s been great to have people from as far afield as the United States, France and Australia participating, and we’ve had singers, dancers, drummers, harpers, whistle players, violinists and small pipe players all taking part,” said Ian Sutherland.

“We are very grateful for all the support and for all the donations, and if anyone would like to add to the funds raised so far, the link is: https://justgiving.com/fundraising/secretary-haddington-pipe-band.”