O what a night.

The ill-attendance gave Anita and I the ill-placed confidence to address the haggis. She's rather more Scottish than I so she delivered the real version - along with imaginary stabbing of the stomach as no real stuffed stomach was present - and I delivered the translation. O how funny we were.

But the night's entertainment didn't peak there. We had a toast to the ladies riven with sexist jokes downloaded straight from a sexist jokes on the internet website. Another fellow rambled through a rambling collection of thoughts, observations and speculations - collected exhuastively from the internet - about Burns' enduring popularity which sent me very close to sleep. A Canadian man inexplicably read a Canadian poem about a man getting burnt alive. And a woman past her youthful peak warbled through a collection of self-penned songs with vaguely Scottish themes.

Suddenly I see my sometimes traditional theatre group as a pinnacle of youthful verve, vitality and contemporary culture.