Toast to Rabbie Burns

Here am I the typical expatriate Scot, living in Kent, the soft underbelly of England, missing Scotland on Burn's Night.

This delicious bottle of malt was given to me today by a client (in passing let me toast the generosity of Mr and Mrs Haalebos) who seems to value my stumbling clinical skills. It is a caricature I know, but here I am missing Scotland in the worst and the darkest days of the winter. I have in front of me "Tam O' Shanter," probably Burns best loved poem - it is a comic masterpiece about an irresponsible and emotional man who becomes engulfed by guilt and lust as he gallops homeward past an "enchanted" church in the midst of clouds of alcohol and a howling storm.

I love poetry but I know it is not a fashionable medium, so I will not recite the whole saga. Here is a lovely wee abstract:_

"While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An' getting you and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm."

I will read this to myself aloud now strutting about as if I were Olivier on the stage...

Hope you enjoy the blip.