Given the FCO has so many Scots it is surprising that no-one has blogged about the 250th Anniversary of Robbie Burns. The Geneva diplomatic community has not had a tradition of celebrating the 25th, but I felt I could not let this one go past.
But how to get a traditional event set up at short notice. Haggis is notoriously difficult to import into Europe whose health and safety regulations on our traditional dish would give Jeremy Clarkson enough ammunition for an entire column. The accompanying whisky was not a problem with a shop in Paris despatching a wonderful selection including a Surprise (a first class Japanese Single Malt to commemorate Sir Thomas Blake Glover's contribution to modern Japan).
Eventually we tracked down someone who could provide the stuffing, but it arrived in the form of a large sausage - would our guests conclude that this was a hitherto unknown German influence in Scottish culture?
The person who was going to cook this great meal is French and bravely set out in search of the real sheep’s stomach! Once this was tracked down and carefully prepared it only remained to refresh my memory on the various classic Burns poems and write the traditional speeches such as Immortal Memory.
The big night took place on Monday. The guests, representing a wide range of countries and cultures, coped well with the peculiarities of this very Scottish celebration. None of them seemed to notice the “Great Chieftain of the pudding race” lying in its “trencher” while beautifully round, had a very slight tinge of green! I suspect from the onions the skin had been boiled in. Fortunately most people were watching the dagger in my hand as the haggis was ceremoniously “despatched”
A subliminal environmentally friendly statement or not, it tasted fine enough, but next year I think we will revert to the more traditional brown!
Posted at 13:50 30 January 2009 by John Duncan | Comments[0]
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