I’m hanging on to the haggis. Not literally, you understand, although at this darkest time of year there’s a lot of it about to be cheerfully consumed with neeps and a nip or six.
But haggis per se isn’t what it’s all about, delicious though I find our national dish and recognising that it is definitely substantial enough to stick to your ribs, not to mention any other surface with which it comes into contact.
I have, it must be said, direct experience of that particular phenomenon, having once hosted a Burns Supper at home where the Other Half gave a swashbuckling rendition of The Address to a Haggis.
This involved much flamboyant brandishing of a rather sharp kitchen knife, used, in the words of the Bard, to “cut ye up wi’ ready sleight”.
Gushing entrails bright, as you might surmise, travel a fair distance and, being to housekeeping what Donald Trump is to ecumenism and gun control, I admit that a dod of desiccated haggis clung to the plaster above the picture rail for literally years afterwards.See Saturday’s Courier for our special free haggis offer for readersIt took a lot of embarrassing explaining to subsequent puzzled guests and careful logistical planning before I eventually got up there with a pointed implement to chisel it off the cornicing.
It had to be done, before it became a stopping off point for geologists looking for hitherto unsuspected prehistoric life forms.
Unlike Nessie, there was nowhere for it to hide.Shining lightBut no, in spite of this and many other culinary and cultural mishaps, it’s the concept with which haggis is most closely associated that I’m clinging to like that little piece of mixed offal to my living room wall.
Christmas? For amateurs! Hogmanay? Pshaw! Who said January in Scotland was dreich?
Well, yes, you may just have a point there But Burns Night and the work of the man it celebrates? It shines as ours and everyone’s.
To paraphrase our sister paper:
“Oor Rabbie, Your Rabbie, A’body’s Rabbie”.
In these times when fear of our fellow man is rife in some cases, for good reason and fear of the unknown or of anything that isn’t exactly like us casts a huge shadow over the way we live and how we might live in the future, I’m clinging to A Man’s A Man For A’ That like nobody’s business.
I want to believe in it. I have to believe in it.
And I will believe in it as long as I can draw breath to argue that we owe it to ourselves to protect what we hold dear against the few fanatics who threaten it, yet still find a way to extend a hand to the vast majority of others who, like us, want a peaceful life for themselves and their families.