Celebration of Rab Burns

"But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle."

What's not to like about St Rab o' Burns? A fantastic supper tonight. The haggis piped in (we used a CD - although technically we do have bagpipes in the Beaker ensemble, they have been banned under the Geneva Convention the way Elsmir plays them). A drap o' a dram. And much singing of "Rose of Scotland".

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

Of course, what we had forgotten was that two members of our Community are in fact Scotchpeople. I refer, of course, to Hamish and Morag. They insisted, throughout, on telling us that in Scotland they don't really celebrate Burns's night the way we did, that it's more of an excuse for a drink than the religious festival we turned it into. They said they don't normally eat porridge as a starter at supper, and that the Procession of the Leprechauns was out of place. They did explain why but, to be honest, I don't really understand what they're saying that often. Maybe it was our ginger wigs that upset them.

In any case, we felt that they were spoiling the atmosphere a bit. We wanted to celebrate the Caledonian strangeness of it all - to enjoy our thoughts of sandy-haired caber-tossing chaps called Angus striding through the heather and playing "hide the sporran", or whatever they do in the Northern Isles. We wanted Columba and Ninian and St Mungo aka Jerry. We didn't want a pair of know-it-alls making everything so prosaic.

So I'm afraid we moved them to sit in their own private room to eat their dinner. But we did make sure it was traditionally Scottish. Deep-fried pizza with battered Mars Bar for dessert. All washed down with a lovely cheap can of extra-strong lager.  We made sure they didn't have any sport on telly, as being Scottish they'd be bound to be losing, and we didn't want to wreck their big night.

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