Burns Night in Amsterdam
For the second time in the month I have spent an evening at Café Pakhuis Wilhelmina. The last occasion was at Hogmanay, whereas this time it was to attend a Burns Supper. Now, the purpose of this event is of course to celebrate the life and works of the poet Rabbie Burns, who lived from 1759-96 (according to Wikipedia at least). He is a national hero in Scotland, and his birthday, that is the 25th of January, has become a sort of de facto national day. I for one am quite pleased that we have taken to celebrating the life of a drunken, womanising, working class poet instead of some general, king or politician.
This particular event had been thought up by a guy called Andy Bruce, a fellow Scot living in Amsterdam, who had actually emailed me about a year ago about arranging such an evening. I was very curious about the sort of crowd that would turn up – would it be a room full of homesick expats, or instead mainly confused Dutchies? In fact, it turned out to be mostly the second with a few of the first.
The evening got off to a fine start with plenty of whisky, soup, music, and of course the highpoint of the evening – the piping in of and address to the haggis. I am not aware of any other cultures in which it is normal to talk to a plate of dead, cooked meat before plunging a knife into it and waxing further about its “gushing entrails bricht (bright)”. It is certainly a site to behold.
I must say that the guy flown over to address the beast and later to read Tam O’ Shanter was brilliant. Worth the entrance money on its own!
So, more music, whisky, beer, and so on later, it was time to head back home through the freezing midnight of Amsterdam in January. At this point, while trying my best to cycle in a straight line while somewhat worse for wear, I was stopped and hassled by the police because I did not have a little red light on the back of my bike (I did have a white one at the front, but that is not enough). I tried the tactic of talking at them about nonsense until they got bored and drove away, which amazingly worked. No fine this time, at least.
One last thing – Andy had wrote to D C Thomson to ask if they would sponsor the event. Naturally, being skinflint east-coast types they did not, but instead sent this enormous ceramic cast of Maw and Paw Broon and the Bairn. Doubtless not many non-Scots will know what I am talking about, but here is is anyway.
