"Horsemanship would ultimately benefit because the people with light hands who are supposed to go to the top of the class in dressage will be recognised," he said.
Here art is achieved with light hands, and the result is a triumphant and very touching song of praise to everyday love and the funky glories of the show business life.
As it was, Scotland's first entry into the Irish 22 came after 30 minutes of play, but it also brought their first try, when David Denton smashed through an Irish tackler and allowed Ruaridh Jackson to feed Richie Vernon whose light hands out of the contact allowed Blair Cowan to flop over the line.
In a minute or two, the grammar school loomed up before us in the darkness with a solid, medieval look, and we saw a group of boys lounging under a street light — hands in pockets, feet apart, and, as they talked, moving about in a street-corner pattern as firmly fixed as that of the solar system.
Normally, you will have any number of tasks on the go simultaneously, but producing large quantities of pasta to the highest standard requires complete focus: you have to concentrate solely on rolling, cutting, filling, shaping and storing, marrying speed with firm yet light hands.
But when two men arrive in a village their only tools may be their own dark or light hands, depending, though most often they will have in these hands a blade of some kind, a spear, a long sword, a dagger, a flick-knife, a machete, or just a couple of rusty old razors.
