Embrace the Curse of Being Born Scottish With Both Hands… But Don’t Drop That Pie

By Robert McNeil

AT LAST, the truth is out. It’s not fish suppers, pies, beer or other sublime scoffables that make Scottish citizens fat. It’s the rotten weather. You may laugh and, it’s fair to say, top dismissers were rushing to rubbish the theory yesterday. But surely there’s truth in it.

Let me explain the science, using some coloured beads and four elastic bands. In Scotland, the sun rarely shines because, yea, the citizens all did bad things in previous lives and have been reincarnated here as a punishment. The lack of sunshine means they don’t get enough vitamin D in their blood. Lack of vitamin D blooters a hormone called leptin, which tells the brain when the stomach has had enough pies. Ergo, as we say in Leith, the theory is true.

Think about it. Oh, you’re far too busy for that sort of thing? Well, let me think for you. For, lo, when I think back to the dreadful diet of my early adult independence, before Scots were constantly told how awful our culinary habits were, it was instinctive and natural in dreich, bitter weather to seek out something savoury. Unlikely though it may seem, we Scots are only human. Like others in the controversial species, we seek warmth and comfort. Standing at a football match in grey and icy February, who’s going to have a salad? Watch my lips: if we lived in a sunnier climate, we’d have a different diet. But we don’t, so it’s difficult for us to adjust. Just as it would be difficult for Mediterranean culinary swots eat pies in their climate. Some people say we might be persuaded to eat salad if it was in a pie. And I don’t mean Dundee salad (chips) either. But salad is cold and wet, so who’s going to eat that in a cold and wet climate, even in a pastry?

We shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. The strictures apply Doon Sooth, too, particularly in what the London media refer to as “the North”. Exclusive reports in all the papers yesterday suggested that nobody in Britainshire, other than a few cranks, was eating five bits of fruit and veg a day. Indeed, the mood is hardening throughout the British isles, with reports coming in last night of unrest and broccoli burnings in some parts of Lancashire and Teeside.

However, yesterday, some analysts were doubting that the rioters were victims of rainfall. They point out that the scientists behind the finding tested Scottish bloaters using the Body Mass Index, a baloney-style formula that declares everyone morbidly obese. My BMI says I should be clinically dead, and yet I’m as lithe as a hippo leaping from glade to glade.

Last nightish, the plump Scottish singer Michelle McManus dismissed the weather theory, saying her weight had ballooned because of all the chips she ate and had sod all to do with sunlight. She also pointed to America, saying it got lots of sun and you couldn’t move for bloaters.

Nevertheless, the boffins insist all tubbies should waddle rapidly outdoors whenever the sun appears and stand aboot absorbing the rays which, of course, also give people in Scotland cancer. It’s a no-win situation. To be born Scottish is a bummer. We’re fat, grim, plug-ugly and diseased. We don’t even run our own stupid country.

We’re a doomed and craven people. Let the skies urinate on our heads. Let ice grip our private parts. Blow hard on us, chill winds, and sear our faces into grim and thrawn expressions. Send us scurrying to Mr Gregg. Let him tempt us with his savouries and gaily coloured buns. We will not repent. We are fallen. We are fat. We’re going to die young. And we don’t give a damn.

I dislike controversy: but all art is deid

I’VE been having terrible thoughts recently. They run like this: all art is dead; there’s nothing new for it to say or do. Controversial, I know, and I dislike controversy in all its manifestations. But we live in an age obsessed with controversy, and you’ve got to swim with the chickens. My thoughts were prompted by the prospect of attending T In The Park, a pop festival of considerable anthropological interest. You can read my scientific findings elsewhere in this journal.

My attendance was marred by a fear that rock and pop are deid. Every single riff and chord has been done. There’s nowhere left to go except into the Land of Repetition. Not just in pop, but in all art. Architecture reached its peak in 1911, and is reduced now to boxes that everyone, except the self-deluding profession itself, despises. Visual art is a tampon on a bedsheet. Jazz and classical music are long finished, beyond desperate discordant experiments.

I’m sure similar observations were made in previous ages, and that someone out there is dying to quote some Roman geezer. But I still can’t see where anything is going, except round and round. Has humankind peaked aesthetically? I don’t know. What do you think? Send your thoughts, along with GBP 2.99, to: The Editor, Pig Farming Today, 2a The Sidings, Ecclechester.

Living with one eye on the next fight can’t be right

NEW revelations show children have an inbuilt sense of right and wrong. Many people believe children are evil and should be imprisoned. However, this is wrong. Only teenagers are naturally evil – they should be imprisoned until they are 25.

I know children who are lovely. One of my favourites said she liked Ringo and Paul best in the Beatles because she thought they seemed the kindest.

But, as they grow older, children face disappointment, treachery, envy, hypocrisy, cowardice and the inescapable knowledge that the adults don’t know what they’re doing. It’s worse today than ever. The country’s moral sense collapsed in 1979 when Thatcher was elected and, since then, it’s been a nastier place.

At T In The Park, wandering glaikit as a clood, I wondered if there was less unkindness in my youth. Folk at the festival were fine, relatively speaking, but you didn’t want to catch anyone’s eye for too long. There was a kind of edge, a readiness to take offence, a state of being on permanent fighting standby.

Very Scottish, of course. But there’s aggro everywhere now. My advice to the nation’s children is this: do not, if you can help it, grow up. I didn’t.

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