I’m rubbish at public speaking and detest it. Even the thought of reciting an English poem of my choice at a Burns Night Supper cast a long shadow beforehand, in spite of the strong probability that everyone at the table would be blootered when the time came for me to get to my feet. A further problem was: which poem should an Englishman choose to read at a celebration of Scottishness, if not of Scottish nationalism? Should it perhaps be an English riposte? Or would something amiable and irrelevant be more politic? A comic poem maybe? A comic poem in a comic dialect? Lewis Carroll? ‘’Twas brillig’, and so on? On the train up I took a doorstep anthology and speed-read English poetry, from Thomas Traherne to Ted Hughes, from one end of England to the other, unsuccessfully.
The males at the dinner wore the kilt, sporran, sock flashes, sgian-dubh (sock dagger) and ghillies. But they were a macho crowd even without the proud tartan. The first pre-supper drinks conversation I had was with a third-generation communist who demanded to know how we in England have allowed such an effeminate individual to take control of the party of Labour? Does anybody honestly expect a working-class Scotsman to vote for that very antithesis of a working man; a man with hands like those? This broad-shouldered giant in a skirt was genuinely puzzled. Moreover, he seemed to be blaming me personally. I enjoyed his assumption that I was a serious-minded person of the left.
Supper was announced. Twelve of us sat down around the candlelit dining table. The meal commenced with the traditional and very tasty cock-a-leekie soup. This was followed by haggis, neeps (turnip) and tatties (potatoes). The haggis was ceremoniously borne in from the kitchen on a silver platter.
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