We have been practicing for the Music Festival; The song we have been practicing is called Minnie o’ Shirva’s Cradle Song, it is a traditional Shetland dialect song. We have been practicing for weeks with our music teacher every Friday. The Music Festival was held in the Mareel on the 18th of March; there were primary schools from all over Shetland coming to participate.

On Tuesday, we had to get up really early because we had to get to school by 8.15 to load up our instruments. We went on the ferry at 8.45, we had to go so early because the ferry terminal double booked themselves so we were put on a earlier ferry. On the ferry we saw Cullivoe Primary; Cullivoe is in the north of Yell.

When we got off the ferry, we did warm ups to help with our voices, we also had thumb wars. By the time we got to Lerwick it was 10.00, we parked up by the Anderson High School, we had some fruit, water and bread sticks. After that we went for a walk around the Knab which is a walking path which goes straight through a golf course. We walked for half an hour, it was really fun!

Next we went to the Mareel; the Mareel is a cinema/cafe/music stadium. We carried our instruments into the entrance were we told to go up stairs into the Café Bar. We saw Cullivoe Primary there; they were about to go on stage so we carefully laid our instruments and went into Screen 1 where we watched Cullivoe and Mid Yell preform. We were in the next category, after a couple more schools we were showed down stairs into the green room were we could tune the bass guitar and the fiddle.

After the next school band came off we were shown towards the waiting room where our music teacher made sure everything was okay and tuned. Everyone was nervous, as we made it on stage the nerves went away. We waited until everyone was ready and launched into our song, all our adrenaline was high, as we finished our song. We were all grinning from ear to ear as we walked of the stage.

Then we got to go to the top of the auditorium and watched the rest of the groups preforming; we waited for the judge to say who got a gold  and who got silver . We knew there was an adjudicator and he was presenting a gold plus which is better than a gold and there was one for the choir group and one for the instrumental section  and guess what we won it for the instrumental section. We were all over the moon and were chatting about it for the whole trip  back home on the bus and planned on the ferry if some of us would trick are family and say we got a bronze and then say just kidding we got a gold plus the best mark!