Return to Spinner's Inlet by Don Hunter

Author:Don Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchwood Editions
Published: 2019-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Burns Night

The Tidal Times had made the declaration a month ahead that there would be a Grand Burns Night celebration at the community hall, “in memory of the Bard of Ayrshire, and everything Scottish.”

Silas Cotswold himself had designed the front page, which was replete with thistles, lions, and a blue-on-white St. Andrew’s cross—a saltire—in each top corner. The page had been reproduced on posters that Silas hung around the community, most of which had been removed by unknown hands as soon as they were fastened up. Silas denounced the vandals in a half-page editorial and said the guilty would get their comeuppance.

The Bell-Atkinson geeks, who were the vandals, carried a smug look. They had recently returned from a two-week trip to Great Britain and had seen some old posters exhorting the citizenry to “Keep Britain Tidy,” which they had removed in their belief that the posters themselves were anything but tidy—as were, they decided, Silas’s Burns Night posters.

The night started with Sheila Martin delivering Burns’s “Address to the Haggis,” the words of which, for anyone not raised five hundred miles north of Carlisle, are largely incomprehensible. The chief reason the audience stayed with her to the last line—“But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer, Gie her a haggis”—was that many of them had gone through her English classes at the high school and remained acutely aware of the consequences of inattention.

Silas next read from the program. “And now an open mic performance on a Scottish theme. Volunteers … anyone?”

Samson Spinner muttered, “Ah, Christ,” as Finbar O’Toole rushed to the stage and unfolded a printed sheet before grasping the microphone.

“A limerick,” Finbar said. “An original one,” and launched into:

“There was a young lass frae Dundee

Who desperately needed a pee.

She stopped at the vicar’s …”

Julie Clements raised her eyebrows at Alun and Jillian, but the kids ignored her and, along with the three O’Toole siblings, joyfully assisted with the rest of it:

“Then lowered her knickers,

And said, ‘Just pretend you don’t see!’”

Sheila Martin, trying and failing to make a stern face, told Julie, her daughter, “You have to keep them away from that O’Toole house.”

“Shut up, Mom!” Julie snapped.

Always ready with a line from the actual Bard, Sheila replied, “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth …”

Alun won a coin toss with Jillian for who should do the thistle piece. He jumped onstage and took the microphone.

“The thistle,” he declared. “Would you like to hear about the Scottish thistle?”

He carried on, undaunted by the silence. “The thistle you might think is just an old prickly pointy thing. But that’s the point.” He paused, grinned. “Point, get it?” And after a further void, “Anyway, the prickles came in useful way back when some attackers were creeping up on Scottish soldiers who were sleeping. The enemy took their shoes off so the Scots wouldn’t hear them—but they stepped on thistles, and that was them done for. The Scots jumped out of bed and killed them. I think they were English,” he added. “And they haven’t been back since.

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