Make your own Scotsman

The assignment was this: "Nanny, can you knit me a little Scottish guy playing the bagpipes?" No, I couldn't. Nevertheless, I hated to say no. I only had about ten days to do it in, a fraction of the usual time. This wasn't for a birthday present or anything trivial like that, but a Grade 6 school project on Scotland, so I felt I had to do a decent job on it. And I had no pattern.

I think she really thought this would be a fully-mechanized, four-inch-high, walking, talking, authentic bagpipe player, speaking in a weird accent and playing that abominable Scottish music, but it didn't quite turn out that way. For one thing, his legs were too stiff to march. The bagpipes were the hardest part. I found myself mucking around with wooden dowels, black Sharpies and plasticene. With my arthritic old hands and all the tiny scraps of costume that had to be sewn together, it was kind of murderous.  

The wild red hair was a sort of tribute to William Wallace (though I don't know if he actually had wild red hair or not). This was from a Braveheart pattern that I didn't use, except for the hair. I had to cobble together bits and pieces from other doll patterns and make the rest up. It worked out OK, I think, but more dolls may not be in my future. 

At one point I asked my husband if I should make him anatomically correct. He thought not, for one of the children might lift his kilt in curiosity about the old legend. You know the one I mean. And I have never knitted a tiny 1/2" penis, and didn't want to screw it up. Interestingly enough, there was a moment when "he" could have become a "she". It could have gone either way, for women can be pipers too, can they not? Chalk one up for gender fluidity.

After all that, and after a kind of lukewarm reception from my grandgirl (who's not into displays of emotion - not cool),  I got my reward. My daughter-in-law picked it up and looked at it, whooped with laughter and said, "That's insane. That is INSANE!" 

An insane Scotsman (with wild red hair) is more than I ever could have hoped for.

"Don't go!!!!": Tourists rate the wonders of Scotland

What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - 'Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home' - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they 'overdid it on the first day.' And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Bontinentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners. And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Ruins to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing 'Torremolinos, torremolinos' and complaining about the food - 'It's so greasy here, isn't it?' - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to 'All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'.

I TOLD you to keep it in the fridge!!

Bog Butter Mystery Solved?

(Not written by me, but by somebody in the UK. I have to give credit where it's due.)

For many years farmers and turf cutters have been finding huge lumps of what looks like butter in the peat bogs of Scotland and Ireland.

The 'butter' is a waxy substance, usually a creamy white or very pale yellow colour. Lumps dating back as far as the Bronze Age, 3000 years ago, have been found in barrels, baskets or animal skins. They're buried in holes deep in the bogs.

Bog butter has fascinated experts for years as until now no-one's been sure exactly what it is.

A team of scientists have been running tests on bog butter from the Museum of Scotland and found that some lumps were made of dairy products while others were meat-based.

This tells us for sure that our ancestors in Scotland and Ireland used the peat bogs as a sort of fridge (remember, this was long before electricity was discovered and fridges were invented). They would put their stores of food in the bogs to keep them cool and safe.

Peat bogs are laid down over thousands of years as plants decompose, or rot. The peat's very wet and heavy so does a good job of keeping the bog butter sealed, away from germs and bacteria in the air.

Once peat has been dug up and dried out it burns very well, which is why locals dig up the bogs and keep finding bog butter.

All sorts of questions still remain though. Why do you think the bog butter stores weren't dug up and used by the people who buried them?

Was the food buried because the bog made it taste better perhaps? Was it buried for special occasions or as part of a ceremony?

(Or did they just really really really really really like shortbread?)