For Shawn Place it was shaping up to be the experience of a lifetime. Finally, after months of rehearsal there was just one week to go before the gombeys departed for the Edinburgh Tattoo, and he was excited.

Then, disaster struck. In moving house, bags containing his beautiful costume, along with all of his best clothes and shoes, were accidentally sent to the incinerator.

With no prospect of retrieval, the blow was devastating. Knowing how many months it takes to create a costume, Mr. Place's initial reaction was to quit. The troupe would have to go without him.

Fortunately, however, reason triumphed over despair. As a proud, third-generation gombey with years of experience in the spotlight, he knew the show must go on.

Thus it was that, when the aircraft bearing the Bermuda contingent to Scotland lifted off the runway, in its belly was a sewing machine, hot glue gun, and all of the raw materials to make a new outfit, including balls of colourful wool, mirrors, chains, pearls, ribbons, velvet, yards of tasselling, and more.

Ahead lay the challenge of making in a week what would normally take months to create. Could Mr. Place do it? It was a question which also burned in the mind of the Bermuda Regiment's director of music, Major Barrett Dill. As a military man, he knew how crucial timing and rehearsals were, and the Tattoo schedule called for strict attention to both.

There was only one decision he could make: Allow Mr. Place special dispensation to skip all but two rehearsals so he could spend every waking hour in Redford Barracks stitching and gluing.

With the Major's faith firmly behind him, and a Herculean task ahead, the beleaguered gombey wasted no time getting down to work.

He had always made his own costumes anyway, so he was no stranger to its intricacies but compressing three months into a week? That would take some doing.

It is not generally realised that there is much more to a gombey costume than meets the eye. Many of the decorations are symbolic.

Mirrors, for example, are to ward off evil spirits, while chains represent bondage, and the tassels hanging from them, people, so it is important for these elements to be incorporated. Nonetheless, Mr. Place quickly realised that, despite his best efforts, the rushed costume would be somewhat incomplete.

Since "the devil is in the detail", it took many patient hours to create the many tassels which adorn the costume, each of which must be exactly the same length.

To achieve this, wool is wound around a tape cassette and tied before it is cut. Every tiny pearl and piece of mirror must be individually hot glued onto the fabric, while other objects are cut out and sewn on. The bands of fringe on the trousers legs must overlap to a precise length to give a "waterfall" effect.

While the beat went on elsewhere, Mr. Place moved to the whirr of his sewing machine, each stitch taking him closer to his goal. As the days ticked by his concentration never wavered until a bee fixed him in its sights one 2.30 a.m., scoring scored a direct hit on the deeply allergic gombey.

Without his all-important medication, Mr. Place knew his situation was not good. Nevertheless, he hoped that his body would work through the all-too-familiar reaction in due course.

However, during a rare sortie to some nearby shops in search a Chinese herbalist, telltale symptoms told him he would soon pass out. Fortunately, he found refuge in a caf?, where he rested his dreadlocked head on the table until he regained consciousness.

Further trouble came when the bulb on his sewing machine blew, sending him on an extended hunt before he found a replacement. Finally, while still recovering from the effects of the sting, after several days of more acute distress in Scotland, during which he continued to sew into the wee small hours of the morning, Shawn Place attained his goal.

"At 5.30 p.m. on Friday, August 1 - the night of the grand opening on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle - I reported to Major Dill in full suit," he says proudly. "I will never forget the smile on his face. I don't think a lot of people thought I could do it."

Admittedly, it did not have all of the decoration it normally would, but to the crowds who greeted the gombeys wherever they went, it was still a work of art.

But what of life inside the heavy costume? For the man who is normally the Place troupe's bass drummer and first chief, successfully performing as a dancer in Scotland had its price.

The gombeys are renowned for their athleticism and high energy performances, which include plenty of fancy footwork, leaps and splits. As much as they train to keep in shape, however, physical punishment is inescapable.

"Your body really gets a workout and you get tired and sore," Mr. Place says. "When the music is on you transform and don't feel the pain, but once you stop the pain comes ... and comes ... and comes."

The veteran runner, who only became a gombey at approximately 19 years old and is well versed in its routines, says that constant training is required to maintain the legendary level of fitness because "you use all parts of your body, and therefore so many muscles", to which must be added the sheer weight of the costumes.

A showman at heart, the lanky father of three could not resist volunteering to help the Scouts and others to sell the glossy souvenir Tattoo programmes before each performance at Edinburgh Castle.

Dressed in full costume minus the headdress he developed a humorous sales pitch which had the queues in stitches - so much so, in fact, that in the interest of speeding up the lines, on several occasions the Police asked him to desist. So did he?

"Of course not," Mr. Place smiles.

Like his fellow performers, after months of rehearsal in Bermuda, he was dismayed to learn on the first day in Scotland that their carefully planned routine was being scrapped.

An allocated solo time span of precisely three minutes meant a complete revamping. Beyond the Tattoo, however, the gombeys went full out with their traditional show, and unfailingly wowed the crowds everywhere.

Whether it was the grand parade on Edinburgh's Princes Street or the Bacardi distillery at Aberfeldy, the reaction was always the same.

The gombeys also became famous for entertaining fellow Tattoo participants while journeying to and from Edinburgh Castle.

"If you can understand gombeys, once you get started it's hard to stop. We were only performing for three minutes but we were all warmed up, our energy was built up, and we were hyper, so after we left the Castle esplanade and were half way down the hill we would beat to the bus and all the way back to the barracks."

The month-long trip was not, however, "all work and no play" - not even for Mr. Place. Though he draws a diplomatic veil over some of the disadvantages of barrack life ("Let's just say it wasn't the Hilton"), other things impressed him.

It was not uncommon, for example, to hear the Canadian bagpipers next door practicing for several hours every day from 4.00 a.m. when the sun was rising, and again late at night following the Tattoo. "Those guys were really, really dedicated," Mr. Place says. There was also the opportunity to make friends with their fellow participants, and particularly the Australians, Koreans, Gurkas and Canadians with whom the Bermudians shared a barracks.

If the cuisine was not always to the Bermudians' taste it wasn't terrible either. However, pancakes and waffles did become a breakfast craving - so much so, in fact, that Mr. Place was among the hoax "victims" lured from bed more than once in anticipation of the non-existent treat.

Visiting Bermudian chef Herbie Bascome's one-off spread of "Bermudian" food, including macaroni and cheese, chicken, hashed shark and more, came like manna in the wilderness, subsequently fuelling an extra-inspired performance.

Despite the obstacles he had to overcome, Mr. Place was proud to have represented Bermuda, and would not have exchanged the experience for the world.

"The first thing I looked for at Edinburgh Castle was the Bermuda flag, and when I saw that I said, `We're here big time'," he says. "Bermuda did well, and they want us back.

"When Brigadier Melville Jameson, the Tattoo's chief executive/producer, addressed us all on the final night he was about to get teary.

He said the Tattoo had not been sold out for a long time, and he attributed some of that to us being there. "After all the rehearsals were completed and it was show time, everybody raised up three notches, and you saw and felt that. Four hundred years of history and we were there."

Nor will Mr. Place forget the stirring sound of the combined massed pipes, drums, brass and wind instruments marching and playing as one. "I still get goose bumps thinking about them."