Flower of Scotland

One's friends do lead interesting lives. An impending wedding in a Scottish castle for a friend's sister is awaited with childish clapping of hands, the thought of skirted-beclad, champagne-swilling English disporting themselves on rain-sodden hillsides, nostalgically recalling 'prima nocte' has a certain colonial feel about it. It should, of course, be remembered that while the toffs on horses were murmuring 'tally ho' on the sidelines; in front of the guns it was the bampots in bagpipes and kilts in there doing the bayoneting and spilling foreign guts on alien fields for the glory of the Empire. Additionally, the Scottish preoccupation with engineering of real gravitas rewarded the world with properly surfaced roads, battleships of behemoth proportions and the steam engine. Oh, yes, and they inventit the tellie..