Burns Night

With Burns Night fast approaching my creative projects this week definitely had to be Scots in nature. My Mum’s family always prided itself on being Scottish (a Scottish name anyway – my genealogy research hasn’t yet found anybody north of Berwick-Upon-Tweed which, I suppose, was occasionally Scottish). So we always celebrated Burns Night and proudly wore the clan tartan. Then I found myself a proper Scotsman to marry and he, of course, celebrated Burns Night as well so nary a year of my life has gone by without a haggis in January, perhaps unusual for an English lassie.

My creative projects were a tartan cushion, tartan napkin and some shortbread. But before I get on to them a little bit about Robert Burns and Burns Night.

Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire in 25th January 1759. He did achieve some success in life with his gloriously Scottish poems depicting all aspects of life in Scotland. His poems including Ae Fond Kiss, A Red Red Rose and To A Mouse are still loved in Scotland and around the world. Although Auld Lang Syne is usually credited to Burns he made clear that he had adapted old folk songs but let’s not let the truth spoil a good story… Robert Burns is considered Scotland’s national poet and his birthday is celebrated every year with a Burns Supper.

A Burns Supper is made up of haggis wi’ bashit neeps and champit tatties (that’s haggis with mashed swedes and potatoes for us sassenachs). The customary running order is that the haggis is brought to the dining table with a bagpiper (in our house it’s whatever bagpipe music Alexa can find). Burns poetry is read, usually the Selkirk Grace and To A Haggis (my husband always reads them out in his authentic Scottish accent), and the haggis is toasted with whisky (there’s a lot of toasts with whisky at a Burns Supper so if you’re playing along at home pace yourself). After the meal more Burns poetry is read, there’s a toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns; a comedic poem written by one of the men at the dinner called A Toast to the Lassies, then a riposte from one of the women (my husband can usually do his Toast to the Lassies off the top of his head, I have to write mine first…). The event is rounded off with a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne and more whisky.

In my days as a London tour guide I used to take a small amount of pleasure in describing to non UK residents what a haggis is, although I’ve never entirely understood why people would be so grossed out with eating those bits of the animal when they’re fine about eating the other bits. If it does make you go all icky though we eat a plant based diet in our house now and vegetarian haggis is just as tasty. I remember one year I managed to convince a whole busload of people that the haggis was a real creature roaming the Scottish highlands, I think they were a bit disappointed when I revealed I was joking…

The Sewing Bit

My big Burns Night sewing project was transforming a tartan skirt I made years ago into a cushion. I was envisaging a beautifully pleated kilt-like cushion…

I love the skirt, it was one of my first sewing projects from a pattern but it comes to above my knees (eek) and I’m too much of a coward to wear it now. Besides, I inherited my Mum’s proper kilts which are a much more respectable length.

After steeling myself with a strong cup of coffee and apologising to my younger self I got out the seam ripper and scissors and hacked it to pieces ending up with these pieces and a worried expression wondering how I was going to pleat a curved piece of fabric. Hmm…

The first two attempts at pleating were not successful so back to Hmm...

Hey, I know! I’ll see if I can cut a straight piece of fabric from a curved piece of fabric, I’m sure that won’t result in swearing and dark muttering at all…

Yay, pleats! Sort of! Now to try and make a square cushion out of slightly misshapen bits of fabric. After a lot more Hmm…, quite a bit of sticking pins in my fingers, sewing seams on back to front resulting in some bad language, one broken needle on the sewing machine and several mental arguments with Patrick and Esme from the Great British Sewing Bee (don’t measure the pleats, Patrick, it’s only a cushion – yes, I know that seam isn’t straight, Esme, I’m trying to upcycle here)…

… I have a cushion! I’m rather pleased with it. I can hear traditional kilt makers screaming that I haven’t pattern matched the tartan properly but I like it so ner. The addition of the kilt buckle and clan badge is to make it look a bit more kilt like and it will receive it’s maiden voyage (not counting its photo call) on my chair on Burns Night itself.

The second sewing project for Burns Night was for my husband. One of the many downsides with him being bed-bound is crumbs and drippy bits going all over the bed when we’re eating so I’ve been making him big napkins from my fabric stash (technically, I suppose, they’re bibs but that word is a bit infantilising so we usually call them tablecloths or napkins).

I don’t think a blow by blow account of this sewing project is necessary and a tutorial would be pointless because I don’t have measurements. Basically, I cut out two squares of fabric to the very precise measurements of ‘whatever fabric I’ve got’ x ‘the amount of fabric I’ve got left’ then sew the two bits together right sides facing, turn them right side out and sew up the gap.

My husband has never held with the Scots tradition that a woman must abandon her family tartan after marriage and wear her husband’s. He’s happy for me to continue wearing my family tartan or his tartan or his Mum’s tartan or whatever but he did make a bit of a sour face when I showed him this which is a tartan that isn’t related to either of us in even the slightest way. He’s a kind man so he told me it was lovely and he’d use it on Burns Night but I know he’s being polite so I will attempt to make another in either his tartan or a neutral tartan (now, where did I put that Royal Stewart fabric?).

The Baking Bit

And what better biscuit to eat at a Scottish holiday than shortbread? My Mum and my Nan always used the Be-ro book for their recipes and I like it too mainly because it uses simple ingredients that don’t require me to go to artisan food stores or order an ingredient on Amazon and simple methods that don’t require expensive specialist equipment or contain confusing directions such as ‘whisk until the cream looks like a wispy fog on a Tuesday morning’.

Be-ro now has a lot of recipes on their website – www.be-ro.co.uk but I do like having the books which you can also buy on their website for the bargain price of £2.99. My array of Be-ro books now includes my own and the two inherited from my Mum and my Nan. I wonder what the plural noun for Be-ro books is?

That’s Mum’s book open on the Shortbread page and it’s the recipe I’ve always used and probably the one she used and maybe even the one Nan used as well so I’m calling it an ‘old family recipe’ which sounds much better than ‘one I got out of a book’.

Following the Be-Ro book’s straightforward recipe I put three ingredients (flour, caster sugar and butter) in a bowl and rubbed together until it looked like this… To be honest I didn’t use butter , we’re a dairy-free household but dairy-free spread worked just as well.

I rolled the dough out and cut them up to go in the oven, on taking the photo I realised my poor cutting skills have resulted in the Ascent of Man in shortbread form. I also cut some up into heart shapes because Burns wrote about love of all kinds, I love my husband and…. I had a heart shaped cutter…

Fresh from the oven (and, look, I found my Royal Stewart fabric) and that plate looks a lot more empty as I type this. They’re not going to survive until Burns Night so it seems the sewing machine and the mixing bowl are coming out again…

If you do celebrate Burns Night I hope you have a good time on the 25th (and don’t have too much of a whisky hangover on the 26th), if you don’t I hope you have a good time doing whatever it is you would usually do on a Saturday night.