12 hours to Burns night

So it’s Burns Night tonight. Will I partake of haggis? It’s basically made of the bits of an animal that no-one would pay to eat.

I’d just like to point out that, in Scotland, it’s Burns Night. For some inexplicable reason, it’s known as Robbie Burns Day here. Canadians, stop doing it, I beg of you. Burns Day is only celebrated by UK Accident & Emergency ward staff on November 6th.

I’d also like to point out that I’ve never been to a Burns Supper. Scottish celebrations (like tonight, Hogmanay, and St Andrew’s) seem to be an excuse to get thoroughly munted in the dark side of the year.

Burns Night tonight

It sure beats Blunt Trauma Night, anyway.

Raise a glass of your favourite industrial solvent to the immortal memory of Scotland’s sodden-drunk poster-boy for good career planning — don’t farm rocky, marginal land if you’re more apt to compose poetry about whatever the plough turns over, don’t consider being a slave overseer in Jamaica, and — whatever you do — don’t be an exciseman if you have a failing for the hard stuff.

Both my parents’ families come from the same part of Ayrshire and the Stewartry that Burns knocked around. We’ve got a family story that an ancestor was once his schoolteacher. We’ve been able to prove that about as much as our theory that we’re descended from Scipio Kennedy, a West African slave belonging to the Cassilis family.

Oh, and you don’t want to know what’s in haggis. It’s truly offal.