Scots Wha Hae

I went to a Burns supper on Saturday night where my mum was speaking. She was doing the reply to the toast to the lassies. She’s been speaking regularly at Burns suppers for years now but this was the first chance I’ve had to see her in action, and it almost didn’t happen. For me at least. I was wearing a shirt (blue, Paisley pattern, no tie), a pair of dark blue (brand new) 501s and a pair of smart shoes. But it was the jeans that did it- my attire was in conflict with the dress code. I was not allowed to pass the threshold of their dingy wee club.

So my dad drove me to the nearest Asda which was open 24 hours and where I bought a pair of smart (purely in the dress code sense) trousers, before returning triumphantly just in time for the first course. The irony of the whole situation was that my dad was wearing a pair of tartan trews which with the simple addition of a couple of metal zips would have constituted a pretty hard line punk statement. But this was lost on the old fogeys of course.

Anyway, to mark the birth of Robert Burns (who was definitely punk) I present to you a portrait of the man himself. I found it while working for Jim, which often involves massacring large numbers of records. Every now and then a piece of paper will fall out of an old record sleeve, sometimes an old letter, sometimes just some scribblings; but this time it was a portrait of none other than Scotland’s very own bard. Drawn by James Bond in 1983 apparently. A rare find indeed.