Musings from the Merse
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The Borders Council is getting into the Will- Ye- No- Come-- back-again- to- Scotland's- Favourite- Short- Break-Destination- Year- of -the- Homecoming business by writing to favourite sons and daughters of the Merse with specific invitations to attend the Common Ridings. After much head scratching and Googling as to whom to get hold of (Jim Clarke is dead so is Duns Scotus) a personal letter has gone to the actress Tilda Swinton. The Berwickshire has the whole story here
Doubtless Ms Swinton pops back now and then to see her parents just down the road but whether she can be prevailed upon to grace the Common Ridings or even the Duns Ba' game remains to be seen.
The letter of invitation lists Scotland's contributions to the Planet:
Robert Burns (the 250th anniversary of his birth is in 2009), golf, whisky, great minds and innovations and Scotland's rich ancestry and culture.
The order is interesting. Personally I would have promoted Golf ahead of Burns and indeed whisky, as it was the uisge beatha or water of life which surely inspired his greatest poems (Try preforming Tam O'Shanter without drink taken)I am told that the Gallic Studies Centre at Edinburgh University has turned away many doctorate theses on the theme of 'Burns: One Third Inspiration, Two Thirds Intoxication' as too hackneyed. Anyhow the Uni's Health and Safety regulations forbid extensive research into aspects of this topic.
(Blurry Image from the Berwickshire: Tilda Swinton is on the right)
Labels: Common Ridings, The Year of the Return, Tilda Swinton
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Will ye No come back again? (For a brief visit?)
An article in the recent Berwickshire News starts thus (see the rest here)
MANY Borderers are set to put pen to paper and invite their friends and family back to the region to 'Return to the Ridings'.
The Border common ridings and festivals have launched the Return to the Ridings invitations, a selection of iconic postcard images for each of the participating events, which residents can send to all their friends and family.
The Return to the Ridings is part of the Homecoming Scotland programme, extending the invitation to Border Scots throughout the world to return to their ridings and join a series of co-ordinated ancient festivals across the Scottish Border towns
The Homecoming Scotland is making use of a Big Burns Commemoration in 2009 to attract expat Scots to revisit the Hameland and spend many Dollars, Euros and Muckles* (a prototype currency for a future Independent Alba)to revitalise the depressed Scottish economy. So out of tax exile will come the fervent patriots Sean Connery, Donald Crump, Gordon Brown et alios attracted by (says the blurb) the whisky, the golf and the music. Donald Crump may not quite appreciate the irony of the Golf.
The image above is one of the 'iconic' postcards now winging their way (Lost Christmas mail bags permitting) to exiled Borderers urging them to revisit the ancient Ridings festivals some of which go all the way back to the 1950s.
Next year will see a lot of this sort of thing.
Ad Nauseam
springs to mind
* At current rates of exchange many Mickles equate to a Muckle.
Labels: The Homecoming, The Year of the Return
