Plenty of Burns Night spirit.. but no whisky for me

FAIR enough, as a friend from the Isle of Bute used to say.

I think Robert Burns would forgive us for celebrating the 264th anniversary of his birth four weeks after the event.

There was haggis for dinner, with swede, but no whisky. I can’t abide the stuff – fortunately, some would say, given my other fondnesses.

And there was something new about this occasion. The dish – some call it a sausage, others a savoury pudding – proudly announced itself to be Lancashire Haggis. From Chorley, no less, made by Brown’s the butchers and sold in our village butchers, Drake and Macefield. You don’t get more English than that.

And that, unfortunately, applied to the dish. I’m used to Scots haggis, brought down from my annual visit to the Highlands. They have sharp, spicy flavour.

This one had all the ingredients, but to my taste it lacked that Scottish oomph. I felt obliged to reach for the HP sauce.

It didn’t all get eaten, much to Mrs R’s satisfaction. Plenty to fry up for tomorrow, when I might surreptitiously add some Serbian hot pepper to remember other meals in other places.

I have only ever been to one full-dress Burns Night dinner, years ago, and oddly enough in Birmingham, thrown by a constituency Labour Party.

I was the speaker, and I haven’t the faintest idea what I found to say, but I think I just about got away with it.

In the oratorical stakes, I’m no Michael Foot, or even John Major.

Ne’er mind, a hack’s a hack, for a’that. As long as you can stand up at the end of the evening and propose a toast to the lassies, it’s fine.

At home, I dinnae bother, ye ken.