GUEST EVENING Our Annual Burns Supper

A MEMORABLE EVENING with a total of 62 members and guests participating.

Chairman and Master of Ceremonies Jim West arranged and presented an outstanding evening of entertainment, poetry and song which was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

The traditional piping of the haggis by piper Martin Duncan was followed by a superb and dramatic address to our main course by Dean Park Primary School pupil Jamie McConnell whose passionate and aggressive rendition of Burns' lines belied his modest years.

Ben McGill, a fellow Dean Park Primary pupil, gave us a provocative and amusing Toast to the Lassies. Ben observed that the lassies now have new loves in mobile phones, make up and shopping but that map-reading and numerical skills were still lacking ! He composed and recited well-crafted lines in the manner of the Bard to make his case.

Ben's provocative, tongue-in-cheek description of the lassies produced a feisty response from his fellow Dean Park Primary pupil Yasmin Ortiz. Yasmin rose to the defence of the lassies' honour, denied that they were obsessed by texting and mobile phones and only took ONE selfie of herself and Depute Head Pam Watson to demonstrate !

No more boys - heaven!  Yasmin called a 'truce' and proposed a Toast to the Laddies.

Mary Maclaughlan then treated us to an excellent rendering of the most seasonal and memorable 'To a Mouse'.

The Immortal Memory was proposed by Andy McGowan. Andy, a former Club member, enlightened us with a superb biography of Robert Burns, his time in world events, his intellectual contemporaries and his human values. Andy emphasised the esteem with which Burns is held in countries throughout the world and the huge number of translations of his work. Burns despised hypocrisy as memorably demonstrated by 'Holy Willie', fathered thirteen children of whom only three survived to adulthood and earned the princely sum of twenty guineas from the publishing of his work in the 'Kilmarnock Edition'.

Andy finished by treating us to his own poetic gem describing a late return from a Rotary meeting entitled 'Nursing her Wrath'. (reproduced below)

Jim Goodbrand did great work leading our singing and providing guitar accompaniment to 'My Love is Like a Red Red Rose', 'A Man's a Man for A' That' and 'Auld Lang Syne'.

Peter McGavigan wound up the evening with a Vote of Thanks to all - our speaker Andy McGowan, Pam Watson and pupils of Dean Park Primary School, Organiser and Chairman Jim West and his team and the catering and bar staff at Kingsknowe Golf Club.

Report by Jim Douglas

'NURSING HER WRATH'

Sae ye're hame at last and whaur's yer key?

Disturbin' a' the weans an me

Ye've even waukened up the dug

A'm tempit fur tae skelp yer lug

Ye're stoatin' drunk and fower oors late

Yer Rotary is ower at eight

A ken fine whaur ye've been of course -

Wi' Arthur in the Auld Grey Horse

Ma mam wis richt, A ken it now

She warned ye'd no' pass Mrs Brow

Without a pint. Or nip, or half

Ye alcoholic little kniaff

Ye're aff the booze fur a month at least ye

Wee sleekit cowerin timorous beastie!

Andy McGowan