Wikipedia’s explanation of Burns Night – its a very very old tradition, originating in Scotland, done as a celebration of the life and poetry of the poet Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), the author of many Scots poems.

I’d been dozing in my chair for quite a lot of the afternoon – to ensure I was in a good state for this evenings events; and it was at 6.50pm we set off to a pub called The Wild Boar: outside the very traditional looking old English pub, there was a sign saying ‘Live and Eat Pie’, and the beer menu (inside) had on it ‘Wild Boar Slaughterhouse’, ‘StoutSnout’ and ‘SpaceTrotter’; in the room where the celebration was taking place – lit candles were stuck in empty wine bottles along the table, and a small man wearing a tartan waistcoat sat down and then an enormous man (who looked really suited to being large) came in in a red suit/jacket, bow tie, kilt and sporran; the couple next to me mentioned another Burns Night celebration they thought might be going on somewhere (done by the brewery) and then started talking between themselves about some sort of raspberry beer, and at 7.30pm, another portly man in a dark red waistcoat began speaking about what would be going on this evening, followed by a man (late 30’s -> early 40’s)(in a blue tartan kilt and black waistcoat) saying Grace.

Things started off rather quietly, but people got livelier, and then some salmon on a mini scotch pancake was delivered to each of us; my pen then disappeared so Mum crawled around under the table and looked ridiculous, found it, and that started a conversation with the people on the other side of us; the couple we’d been talking to originally began another conversation, I said something about health and safety laws and risk assessments and how it might be required for the Address to The Haggis (due to the use of a large knife thats required), and I was struggling to hear what the woman said on the next topic, but thought it was about the NHS and that she said something about rubber ducks (and there was a CD case that said ‘Scotland Let’s Party’ on it by the stereo); we vaguely talked with the couple next to us about things parents tell you to do, and Mum said I still refuse to use a handkerchief; lamb and barley soup was presented to us all, eaten, and I asked the man on the other side of me if he was enjoying his beer, and he said humorously that ‘it’s shandy and is healthy!’.

I began chatting to them about gardens and walking; a woman passed a sheet of paper with the ‘Reply from the Lasses’ (to the Address to the Haggis) on it down the table for it to be read out by someone, and a CD of bagpipe music began playing, and the man opposite the woman next to me said something I forgot because a wonderfully authentically Scottish looking bagpiper piped in the haggis, which was addressed by the portly man in the waistcoat.

Mum sipped a small glass of whisky, which made her eyes bulge slightly – and that started a conversation about alcohol drinking, the sensibleness of different generations, and education, and the man sat next to Mum looked up a person who had won a Nobel Prize for physics – on his phone, and a remark this person made about the height of a skyscraper and working out its height. 

The next bit of chatting (with the man next to Mum and the woman next to me) was about education, I had a short rant about mine, and then some whisky – to be poured over the haggis was delivered; haggis was presented to everyone, apart from me, Mum enquired and I was presented with mine; some conversation about nurseries started – but led on to glow in the dark duvet covers and whisky, and I raised the subject of drunkenness due to Mum sniffing hers, martial arts came up, the man sat next to her told a story about another bloke who said something bad to another man’s wife and then the 1st bloke did something and broke 3 of his fingers,  and then he asked about her work, coughed a lot, she whacked him on the back, he said he loved the spec-savers classroom advert, and I said how peculiar I find my generations way of dancing.

He also said he’d played rugby in his younger days (when  I asked about forms of exercise he’d done and after Mum had explained the exercise class), we got on to archaeology and digging things up, he said he’d dug up something with the engraving of The Lion of Flanders on it, and then the bagpiper started up again; the portly and well spoken man in the purple-y coloured waistcoat stood up again and introduced a small man in a tartan waistcoat called something I forgot, who read out/spoke about the history of Robbie Burns, the number of illegitimate children he had (and at that point some chocolates that tasted like they had a small amount of whisky in them were delivered to the table), and said something about humpback whales, tamershanty, someone who I think was called Kirkton Jean, and then said ‘caught by warlocks’ through the microphone on the other side of the room, ‘mounted meg’, something about not being able to follow witches and warlocks through a running stream (and a man behind me said – humorously – ‘that’s why some of us are stuck in Warwickshire!’).

Then this small portly man talked a bit about a portly mouse, said lots of stuff that Mum and the man sat next to me agreed wasn’t particularly coherent; at 10.55pm, 1 of the men wearing a kilt and sporran got his phone out of his sporran, a song that seemed to include the lyrics ‘moose about this hoose’ was playing, and the event manager came in and stood on the table to read a ‘reply to an invitation’ (and the man next to Mum said ‘I wonder what health and safety would say about this?!’) – and read it in a wonderful (but mimicked) Scottish accent; the man in the maroon waistcoat introduced someone called Fergus Wilkie (also in a kilt – late 40’s and short curly black-ish hair) to do a ‘toast to the lasses’, and he went through a humorous list of the benefits of being a lass – and that was followed by the men being asked to stand and toast us again, and on page 3 of this particular toasting script, there was a bit that required a girl to stand on the table and recite the girls bit of it (which a woman (mid->late 20’s) who’d been given the script an hour ago did), a script of Auld Lang Syne was passed out, and some rather raucous singing went on before the evening did conclude at about 11.15pm (and I was in bed at 12.15am).