True Scot

It's Burns night tonight. Lots of twee tartanry in the offing – just what sort of person would go to the "celebration" at the JD Wetherspoon in Cricklewood incidentally? – and you'll either find all that 18th century dialect and lyrical verse intolerable or, you'll agree with Seamus Heaney's Birl for Burns in today's Telegraph:

For Rabbie's free and Rabbie's big,
His stanza may be tight and trig
But once he gets the sail and rig
Away he goes
Like Tam-O-Shanter o'er the brig
Where no one follows.

I incline to the latter view, though I don't quite see why the Russians, in particular, are so red hot for Burns. Still good as he is, though, there is more to Scottish culture, although Burns night does tend to mask that fact.

In that spirit, here's the truest insight to the human condition to come out of the place.

Y'aright there Rab?