Scotland's Supperhero
It's Burns' Night tonight, and if you live in Scotland, you must have been under a stone for the last few months if you didn't know that. That's not the case most years, but this is special- it's the 250th anniversary of his birth.
But that's not all. The Scottish Government declared 2009 to be the year of the Homecoming, when the Scottish diaspora would come home and fill their sporrans with shortbread and enjoy a dram after a round of golf. You'll forgive the cynicism I hope. Unless you stand to make some money out of this, that reaction hasn't been unusual since the event was launched last year.
I'm actively involved in an organisation which has made a sizeable contribution to the healthy continuation of more traditional aspects of Scots culture. But it has had its funding cut this year, and an approach to the Homecoming organisation last year was dismissed because promoting Scottish music in the community was not relevant.
It's changed a bit since then, maybe because there has not been much warmth for this thing from the Scots that stayed behind to keep the country going. It's now being presented as a cultural event, as well as a commercial one. (And we have a commercial, with Shir Shean (he used to deliver our milk) telling us how much he loves us and thinks about us all the time, and the Nephew singing).
Anyway, back to Rabbie/Robert/Robin/Rob Burns. There has never been so much spoken, written, sung or played out about Burns, ever. In our house, it's not that unusual to hear Burns sung or see haggis eaten, any time of year (we don't go in for recitation so much.) That may not be typical of a modern day Scottish household, but it's not that unusual either.
The BBC has had endless people on declaring the genius of the man and how much he means to them. That's great, but their enthusiasm is proportional to the bare-faced cheek of BBC Scotland in going so big on Burns this special year, when in recent years, it barely registered a flicker of interest in their schedules. A quick look at the schedule for 25 January 2008 shows... one 30 min programme on TV, two 30 min programmes on Radio Scotland (one after midnight).
Even better than this wall-to-wall Burns now would be if they would give a fraction of this time to recognition of other writers, poets and musicians, living and dead, and live up to what many would expect of their public service broadcaster role in Scotland.
A poet's not just for Burns' night, and shouldn't have to wait till their 250th birthday for a decent party. Cherish what we have now, and maybe more folk will come home and part with their bawbees.
