Ah heck. Very sorry indeed to hear about the passing of my pal Willie Haines. Many of you will have known his shop Blackfriars Music just off the Royal Mile, a real cornucopia of a place with bits of pipes, music books, records and all sorts. I think I took a friend to buy a pretty decent Freshwater bouzouki there once.


When I became the Traditional Arts Development Officer for Edinburgh Council in 2002, I'm sure Willie wouldn't mind me saying that he quickly made himself known to me and was regularly on my case. But not aiming to give me a hard time, but simply with idea after idea of how to push things forward, new ways to get the word out, to promote and publicise the folk scene, gig guides, websites, the Scottish Folk Directory amongst other things.


I think we even got quite far down the road with approaches to fairly senior councillors about a Bagpipe Strategy for Edinburgh partly to address some of the, shall we say, less proficient members of the tartan clad busking fraternity (I still have some of the paperwork somewhere) that he felt weren't a great advert for the city. Willie attended public meetings, focus groups, kept in touch, took part, put the work in across the traditional arts, and supported the development of the Ceilidh Culture festival.


Through it all, the glint in his eye, banter and his endless enthusiasm, I always felt he was behind what I was doing and I valued his support for a 20-something coming into quite a high profile new role at that time.


Like myself, he was a man for antiquarian Scottish books, and Scots songbooks in particular. He had the foresight of developing an idea to have them digitised and produce a resource for song research and singers, although it never came to fruition before the big internet giants swooped into the university library collections and did their thing.


Willie knew my Irish heritage too and always made an effort to invite me to events at Edinburgh's Festival of Ireland which he helped found. Initially I think he asked me to be a committee member but I was probably on too many committees already at the time of asking. In hindsight, a shame. The Festival has made great inroads and become an established part of the local Edinburgh Irish community.


After I left the Council role and ultimately the city, I didn't see Willie so often, but on my odd forays into Sandy Bell's, usually after a folkie event of some kind, the crack and the banter would still be there, and more ideas, as always. Latterly he struggled with throat cancer, sometimes noticeably affecting his voice and appearance, but even at that he was chuffed to bits to have told one of the medics involved in his care about his interest in folk music and discovered that they were a schoolfriend of mine.


Others will know more about Willie's musical talents - he was a formidable anglo-concertina player - and his career in various bands including Shegui with the iconic Irish singer Seán Keane. I wish I'd had more time to chat to him about all that, ideally with a tape recorder. A brah Dundonian tongue in his heid, I felt there was a bit of Dundee/Angus kinship between us as well - ye kent whaur ye were wi Willie.

Huge condolences to his family and friends. He was a real character, whose gentle friendship and support I really valued, especially in those early years finding my way in Auld Reekie. Thanks Willie.