Last weekend, boyfriend and I attended the annual Burn's night event in Lindsell, Essex. This weekend is typically one of the highlights of my year, as we get to stay in Marjh's (parent's) amazing house in the very rural countryside and I get to see all my friends from Uni.
In a way, this year's celebration was slightly stressful, as Marjh had texted me the evening before our departure to inform me that I had to deliver the 'Reply to the Toast to the Lassies' this year - apparently an endeavour which requires more than simply printing off a set speech from the internet, and has to be at least five minutes long!!
So the four hour train journey down to Essex went by very quickly, but I am quite proud of the toast I managed to produce by the end of it...
In a way, this year's celebration was slightly stressful, as Marjh had texted me the evening before our departure to inform me that I had to deliver the 'Reply to the Toast to the Lassies' this year - apparently an endeavour which requires more than simply printing off a set speech from the internet, and has to be at least five minutes long!!
So the four hour train journey down to Essex went by very quickly, but I am quite proud of the toast I managed to produce by the end of it...
REPLY TO THE TOAST TO THE LASSIES
Last night I received a frantic text message from our sweet host asking (nay, demanding!!) that I whip up a reply to the toast to the lassies. Never a one to disappoint my mother and comrade-in-arms, I have spent the arduous journey from the North contemplating not only how to celebrate both the lack of morality and vices of the members of the less fair sex, but how to end it on a complimentary note!
Robert Burns lived a brief but full life, being well-known for his bawdy and rakish behaviour. He fathered twelve children off four women in a short thirteen years - there must have been more lactation going on in Scotland than on a dairy farm! Yet this aspect of Burn's life leads me to the start of my compliments for Scottish men - celebrating the size of the Scottish manhood
*hold out my hands to demonstrate*
Not too many years ago, when we were living the life of luxury in St Andrews, there was rarely a week where we didn't have the privilege of watching a shinty boy on the pitch - caman in hand. And of course, never a day were by without seeing a shinty boy in the pub - pint in hand (the left one, of course). We can only thank our lucky stars that their use of formal scottish dress was limited to their annual ceilidh, otherwise we would have seen much more (or less) in hand!
In all seriousness though, I think all we ladies agree that the kilt is a complete aphrodesiac. These young men nowadays who tart themselves up in skinny jeans with their bottoms hanging out don't really do it for me. But when a chap
"haps his hurdies with the passion pleats"
every woman in the room...nay, every woman in the world, goes trembly at the knees and succumbs. A social anthropologist who was asked why the kilt should be the world's greatest knee-trembler, just laughed and said:
"accessibility, old chap, that's what fascinates them - accessibility!!"
Ladies, take care, I'm speaking from experience here when I say that what lies beneath the kilt is best left to the imagination!
However, it's fair to say that Scots men have acquired a few social graces in the last couple hundred years. They no longer belch in the face of the woman they married, and some are even rumoured to remove their socks before sex! Nowadays though, alibis for bad behaviour based on a poor, deprived Scottish childhood no longer hold any substance unless you can prove you were breastfed by your father!
Robbie Burns did not suffer fools quietly. In a statement addressed to a gentleman at table who kept boasting of the company he kept, he wrote:
"What of lords with whom you've supped
and of dukes that you dined with yestreen!
A louse, sir, is still but a louse
though it crawl on the locks of a queen!"
In this light, we see Robert Burns as a true champion of common man. But what is common man nowadays but someone who doesn't know where to look when he eats a banana? The common man is like a bottle of wine - robust yet lacking in flavour, fruity but all too easy to oversample. How would Robert Burns fit in with this common man?
Well, he'd be happy to know that recent polls have shown that men who do more washing up get 1.6x more sex. Unfair perhaps, but in retrospect, leave the boy in charge and you'll be happy in bed. So cheers to the laddies!!!!
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