Burns Night – Chasing the Haggis!

Chasing the haggis – Burns Night and a haggis shortage

Burns Night is a peculiarly Scottish tradition to celebrate the life and works of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. Held on the 25^th January, the date of his birthday, the event takes the form of a formal dinner accompanied by recitations of the poet’s verse and sometimes ends in a ceilidh with Scottish dancing. Central to the evening is the Burns supper, a meal of haggis, tatties and neeps, and taken with a wee dram of whisky.

However, this year the centrepiece and main ingredient of the Burns supper, the haggis, is a scarce commodity and certain to be missing from the table of many a celebratory meal. The reason for this shortage is due to new European Union regulations passed in Brussels. Scottish farmers are no longer being allowed to breed them in captivity for the sole purpose of providing food for the table. In other words haggis husbandry has been outlawed in order to preserve non domesticated stocks.

To conform to the new rules this plucky little beastie, which is not officially designated an endangered species, can only be caught and killed in the wild. It therefore has to be hunted and this is proving rather more difficult than at first envisaged with the old traditional skills of haggis hunting having to be quickly re-learnt and re-mastered.

The haggis lives in remote areas of the Scottish Highlands where its natural habitat is the rocky and scree lined slopes of the mountains. It is only found above 1000 feet living in small colonies in burrows lined with heather. Setting traps has proved ineffective as the wily creatures are able to free themselves, or are released by their fellow haggis. Block the entrance to the burrow and they will merely make another, often tunnelling through the rock.

The only sure way of catching these creatures is to chase them. Haggises are lopsided, born with shorter front and rear legs on their right side enabling them to run around the mountain tops, which they do in a clockwise direction. Therefore when chased anti clockwise and confronted the animals tend to fall over and roll down the slopes where they can be scooped up in large nets.

Unfortunately, following several bad winters in a row and the recent severe cold and snowy weather in Scotland the ghillies, runners and netters have been unable to take to the mountains and catch the creatures in sufficient numbers. Therefore this coming year many a table on the twenty-fifth is likely to be bereft of the traditional haggis, their place taken and filled with a vegetarian haggis substitute.

Enjoy your Burns Night. Happy feasting, and I end with this traditional verse.

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

If you enjoyed this story, this and many more can be found in my book

“A Funny Thing Happened”  available on Amazon Kindle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006PVVAZ2

IKEA is like Marmite!

Yes, that’s right. You either like it or you hate it!

Personally I am happy going to IKEA, so long as it’s no more than once a year. It’s not the products I resent; it’s the IKEA experience I detest. The slow and laborious circumnavigation of a torturous route strewn with dawdlers, kiddies, prams and buggies when all you want is the storage solutions. There is no direct ‘Advance to Go’.

So you find the item you came for, carefully write down the product code and head for the warehouse to find the flat pack. Only it’s not where it should be, there’s no one to ask and the only way to check you have written down the right number is to go back through the store. But that means battling your way back to the beginning to throw a double six before once more attempting to skip down the IKEA yellow brick road.

You now realise you have been in the store so long you need a break, sustenance in the form of coffee and meatballs. Where’s the restaurant? It’s at the end, the wrong end to where you are now! No, I don’t like the IKEA experience. And I am not alone.

The other day a friend of mine won the IKEA game hands down, hoist them with their own petard. She had gone to resolve a storage solution in her kitchen larder. A unit (actually bought a few days earlier from IKEA, and a whole story in itself!) had a shelf underneath and if kitted out with some new boxes or suchlike would just finish it off. She hunted high and low, here, there and everywhere but just couldn’t quite find the right size of box. Then she espied it. The perfect solution. Long narrow storage cardboard boxes with a cut down front so you could see the contents. The only slight problem was the boxes in question were actually full of multi-packs of batteries. They weren’t an IKEA storage solution product at all. Not perturbed in the slightest she emptied a few and asked an assistant if she could take the empty boxes. How could he refuse and best of all, they were free!

Care for a taste of Marmite now? You might just like it after all.

 

 

PUBLISHED ON AMAZON…”A Funny Thing Happened The Other Day”

Another success!

Be amongst the first to download “A Funny Thing Happened The Other Day”…..

You can now read a collection of my humorous stories on Amazon. Currently available as a Kindle download and out soon in hardback.

“Twelve +1 ways to enjoy funny everyday moments throughout the northern UK, as told by a Yorkshireman who waded into; then, out of the customer service business, emerging with enriched storytelling talent for your reading pleasure.”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Funny-Thing-Happened-Other-ebook/dp/B006PVVAZ2

A new culinary delight from north of the border

Now I am sure everyone has heard of the famous (or should that be infamous) ‘deep-fried mars bar’. A culinary masterpiece and staple, so it is said, of the Scottish diet.

Now there is a new delicious delicacy on the menu to set your palate racing and test your taste buds. It is the ‘Braveheart Butter Bomb’. A tempting desert of nearly 1500 calories dreamt up by Simon Robertson, head chef of the Fidler’s Elbow in Edinburgh.

Created, or should that be engineered, from balls of frozen butter ‘marinated’ in batter laced with Scotland’s renowned amber nectar (whisky or Irn Bru) and then deep-fried to a golden finish. Accompanied by several dollops of Irn Bru flavoured  ice cream drizzled with a fruit coulis.

Talk about ‘power to the plate’ and building your strength up for the Scottish winters. The Braveheart Butter Bomb is definitely not for the faint hearted or those who prefer their ‘five a day’. This is Scotland where the norm is ‘one per day’!

Bon appetite.

 

PUBLISHED!

I make no excuses for blowing my own trumpet and feeling chuffed today!

“Negotiating with a Yorkshireman - Antony Waller witnesses a great negotiator in action”

Yes, that’s me in print in the December edition of the Dalesman!

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal – Isn’t autumn wonderful!

Isn’t autumn wonderful!

Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire. A UNESCO World Heritage Site

A world heritage site, Fountains Abbey near Ripon in North Yorkshire is a 12th century Cistercian monastery, one of the largest and best preserved in England. A fantastic place to go for a walk!

WriteNow – a writing group

I have joined a local creative writing group. Once a fortnight we meet in an upstairs room of the Old Courthouse and for a couple of hours chew the fat on things literary and written (and on a few other subjects too!).

It’s a new group, we are slowly finding our way and hoping to persuade people ‘in the business’ to come and talk to us over the months ahead to pass on a little of their collected wisdom. Most of all it’s good fun, and that includes the homework. Yes, homework! Each week we set ourselves a short written assignment then read it out next time. It’s fun, honest.

Here’s one from the other week – everyone chose and wrote down a word and that word had to be included in the piece of writing. Simple? Judge for yourself. These were the words : “Vase: hammer: Ice cream: scarecrow: pencil: dragon: wristwatch: eagle: rocking chair: wheel barrow: pen: radiator,” and here’s what I made of them. Enjoy the read!

Leaving

He would have to go. He knew it couldn’t go on like this. Enough was enough. Mike looked up from eating his bowl of corn flakes to the far side of the room where Tom was sitting in his rocking chair. He was rocking faster than usual today and the back of the chair was banging against the radiator. Annoyingly so. Mike looked away, his appetite suddenly gone. He didn’t even wish to consider what the old man was about to do with the pencil he was inspecting. Tom glared at him and swapped the pencil for a pen. Mike pushed his bowl away, slurped a few mouthfuls of hot tea and left the table.

Grabbing his jacket and car keys Mike shouted a quick ‘cheerio’ and ran out the front door. What the hell!  There was a scarecrow laughing at him in a wheelbarrow parked in front of his car. He sighed and glanced at his wrist watch. That settled it. The other night had been bad enough. Woken by the sight of Tom standing there in his underpants, hammer in one hand, a painting of a dragon and an eagle in the other. The situation was well and truly out of control now. This was the final straw.  He would say something tonight when he had more time.

Behind him the net curtains twitched.

“He’s gone, love. Didn’t even finish his breakfast today. And I don’t think he was too chuffed at having to move that barrow.” Rose patted the curtains back into place and moved the vase of freesias into the middle of the window. Their sweet scent filled the air reminding her of the first time she and Tom had met.  He had bought her flowers that day, freesias, and then bought her an ice cream. All those years ago. Her thoughts returned to the present. Soon there would be just the two of them. Perhaps she ought to say something, speak to Mike. Tom wouldn’t.

Mike skipped breakfast the next morning. Rose squeezed Tom’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. The suitcase was already in the car. Tom raised a hand in a final salute as the car pulled out the drive.

“Bloody good riddance, eh Rose. And no more lodgers. I’m not going through that again.”

The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival: The West End Front

A fascinating account of the life and times of the famous London hotels during World War II and the interesting people who visited, worked and stayed there. The Ritz, the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridges all had their share of exiled foreign royals, politicians and ministers from home and abroad, soldiers and spies, thieves and conmen, the famous and the infamous of the time as their guests.

In Cheltenham Matthew Sweet in his newly published book “The West End Front” treated his audience to a most interesting, absorbing and illustrated talk into a few of the more extraordinary happenings and  snippets of life at these ‘palaces of luxury’ during the wartime years. He explained how the hotels became a refuge for the rich and famous, wartime meeting places, a venue for socialising for people from all walks of life, an oasis amongst the desert of war.

He spoke about King Zog of Albania who, with his family, ministers and advisers, occupied a full floor of the Ritz apparently satisfying the bill by payment in gold bullion.

How suite 212 at Claridges Hotel for one night became the sovereign territory of Yugoslavia on the 17^th July 1945 to allow Crown Prince Alexander to be born on Yugoslav soil (there was actually a box of soil placed under the bed).

People believed they would be safe staying within their walls, that their edifices were sound and strong, almost invincible buildings (they did nothing to discourage this ‘reputation’ although there was absolutely no substance to this whatsoever) which was fortunately not tested directly by German bombs.

The Savoy Hotel actually boasted the most luxurious air raid shelters in London with downstairs bars and rooms converted to take beds partitioned by curtained bays, all with maids, valets, waiters and nurses. This was at a time when the underground stations were not used as air raid. A protest was led by communist party organiser Phil Piratin and a group of his followers, at a time when no one could be refused admittance or sanctuary during an air raid to highlight the inequalities between the rich and poor.

With their famous elegant bars and restaurants the hotels were exempt from the everyday rationing and wartime restrictions, although they did lose their Italian waiters and foreign managers to internment camps. The bars, foyers and corridors were fertile listening places for foreign spies eager to catch ‘war talk’, and there were examples of suspected double agents living there.

The talk was a fascinating insight into this bizarre wartime world only scraping the surface of his well researched and detailed book which includes many interviews, reminiscences and personal anecdotes.

Let’s Dance

The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival: my diary continued

And all because the lady liked….

Do you remember those adverts from the 70s and 80s? The ones for Cadbury’s Milk Tray. A man dressed in black would leap from a helicopter, swim through shark infested waters, scale the side of a cliff to a house, shin up the trellis to climb into the lady’s bedroom window and all to leave a box of chocolates and a rose on a table by the side of her bed.

I was reminded of that yesterday!

We were just leaving for Cheltenham and an afternoon event at the festival. Just a little bit of a rush. I know how you ladies like to look your best. With the front door pulled to behind us we were getting into the car when you suddenly hear those dreaded words, “Oh no, I’ve picked up the wrong keys. I haven’t got a door key. We’re locked out.”

Sure enough we were!

A search through the cavernous handbag confirmed the worse. No keys. “I may have left the bedroom window unlatched and you can push the lower pane up. There’s a ladder in the garage.”

Only the garage was locked and, yes you have guessed, the key is in the house. So we began knocking on neighbour’s doors to borrow a ladder. Now it’s not often a ladder is too long but the one we managed to borrow was. Great for shinning down chimneys, not for bedroom windows.

Now this particular bedroom window has a stone sill festooned with flower troughs. A lovely sweet scented display in summer but a bit of a barrier for those wishing to elope or climb in. Anyway I managed to get the lower window open but it meant I had to crawl in forwards. Cue gales of laughter from down below at the sight of a pair of legs slowly disappearing into the bedroom.

It was never like this in those adverts. Still I didn’t leave any chocolates or a rose either, just dirty footprints on the carpet.

We made it to our event at the festival though!

The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival: A Short History Of England

Simon Jenkins, A Short History of England

I find history talks at Cheltenham are always good value. Not from the monetary point of view, but from the wealth of information imparted by the speaker in such a short space of time. Simon Jenkins was no exception. In 40 minutes we were taken on a journey through the lanes of English history from the time the Romans left Britain to the present. His book ‘A Short History of England’ tells the story in 50,000 words. Comparing the teaching of history to a map of the London underground he said it was a case of everyone knows where the stations are but you are not quite sure how they all link together. This book sets out to remedy this. He mentioned key dates and events, 1066, Magna Carta, Battle of Agincourt and many many more giving informed opinion throughout.

Describing 14^th to 16^th century history as particularly interesting he highlighted the ongoing battle between Parliament and Monarch, the influence of religion as the country swayed between Protestant and Catholic. This was the period which underpinned the next few centuries which would prove to be perhaps less interesting as England exerted her power and influence on the world. This was a talk on England’s history, as opposed to incorporating that of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He commented on how our history was sometimes sanitised to highlight only victory and success and not the defeats, although they too were sometimes portrayed as ‘victories’.

Finally he brought the journey to a close mentioning the rich heritage of English Prime Ministers and Statesmen and how in his opinion England had fallen behind other countries as the 20^th century had progressed.

An interesting mix of questions from the floor completed this excellent event.

The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival: my diary continued

We drank a nice meal at Brasserie Blanc. Three excellent courses and a couple of bottles of red wine or was it the other way round? Anyway I can recommend the roast barbary duck with blackberry sauce. The mussels were good too and I’m sure we had two desserts including a huge baked Alaska for two! A long evening which did get a bit hazy and finished with me being poured into a taxi. Shazza was staying next door at the elegant Queens Hotel. Where else would she stay!

However, it was a chance to catch up, chew the fat and put the world to rights. And catch up we did, though I didn’t get to hear the full story of how Shazz had come to be at the airport in a fur coat and little else.

“Pet, you just wouldn’t believe me. And it’s probably better you don’t know the full story, Italian politics being what they are.”

No, she wouldn’t elaborate further.

“So what was going on when I heard your raised voice this afternoon, Shazz?”

“Raised voice. That’s a polite way of putting it. I know I can be kinda loud sometimes.” She sighed and continued. “I’ll tell yers. I’m sick of it. Heartily so. Aye, really pissed off. I’ll explain. I’m lucky and travel a lot, too much sometimes. Round the country, over to Europe, even the US and Canada on occasions. So, is it just me, but here in this country people’s manners and behaviour’s gone right down the pan. No one seems to have any consideration for anyone or anything. Just attitude towards you. I bawled them two lads out for being plain obnoxious, vile behaviour, their lewd language. I went too far. I should’nt have hit the guy with the tray, but I was so angry. There’s no need for it, no place in our society.”

She stopped and refilled our glasses. I had’nt heard Shazz talk this way before. Quiet and earnest.

“Take the other day and what happened to a good friend of mine. He was knocked to the ground and kicked senseless, when he came to he was in hospital. And why? All because he saw some guy with his hands round a lass’s neck, effing and blinding like a trooper. Middle of the day, the high street and in broad daylight. So he went across to say something, to remonstrate, to help the young lass. He got as far as saying ‘Hey….’ Like I said he woke up in hospital. So much for trying to be public spirited. Well it’s time it stopped. Yes I know times are hard. I’ve seen hard times too. Growing up in Gateshead wasn’t exactly a bed of roses. I left school at 16 with little education and I haven’t always been an angel, but I didn’t run around like some feral misfit blaming others. No, I like to think I have done something about it. Improved myself so I can give something back to society. Yes, there’s a lot wrong today, has been for a while. Do I sound as if I’m on a crusade, getting on my soapbox?”

“Sounds like you’re stepping up there, Shazz.”

She picked up her glass, swilled the wine round and round, watching it rise and fall. She put it down on the table and put both hands over the base as if holding it down. She stared long and hard into her glass before she spoke again, refocusing and locking her blue eyes onto mine.

“Don’t laugh, Pet, and I know there’s a lot that will, but I am determined to do something about it. I’m going to stand for Parliament. So, tell me, who are you hoping to see at the Festival this year?”

To be continued…