Hunting the haggis

As I am sure all of you know, January 25th is Burns Night, the night that we Scots celebrate the birth of one of our national heroes, the poet Robert (aka Rabbie) Burns. He is the writer of such wonderful poems as "My Love Is Like Red Red Rose" and "Ae Fond Kiss" - a personal favourite - and is credited also with "Auld Lang Syne".


Like most expat Scots, my feelings of Scottishness are massively multiplied as a result of being abroad, and so hosting a Burns Suppper here in Singapore became an imperative. No sweat, I thought, I've done it lots of times in London. Alas, I had reckoned without the import controls on the ingredients that make up my national dish. So all that I could find was haggis in a tin. Haggis in a tin! How can you use Burns' wonderful words to address a tin? Well, needs must when the devil (in this case, tinned haggis) drives, and so we made the best of it. We had 10 guests, most of them new to the wonderful world of Burns, and the party went on till the wee small hours.


Now, despite being Scottish (and proud of it) I have never much liked whiskey (I'm more of a Chateau Margaux girl really), but since moving here, I've developed a taste for the stuff, and we were the fortunate recipients of several bottles of malt on the night. So if you think you don't like whiskey, try one of the Speyside malts like the Macallan Elegancia - 12 years old, and matured in sherry casks. It's like drinking vanilla flavoured brioche smeared with the finest honey. Divine! I have it on the rocks (no alternative in this climate) which really brings out the flavour. Slainte!





It's a while since I've shared my movie thoughts with you, but the critic in me just has to recommend "Dan in real life". It stars that guy from Evan Almighty and the lovely Juliette Binoche, and is a wonderful mix of poignancy and moments of complete hilarity. Go and see it now! And "Stardust" too.


A few posts ago I wrote about the film "Lust, Caution" which we decided not to go and see because the Singapore film board had censored out all the lusty bits. However, the club that we belong to has a little cinema which shows movies every weekend, and we saw the unexpurgated version there last weekend. Wow! and wow again! There was much speculation at the time of the movie's release about whether the sex was the real deal; all I can say is "wow"!

Till the next time.........