To a Macaroni Pie

Politics has been a bit fraught this week, and I'm sure you need another how-you-should-vote article like a hedgehog needs a steamroller, so I thought I'd give everyone a nice break.  Happily, this accords with my long-standing policy of being a snivelling coward, so it's a win all round.

It's Burns season, so here's another wee pastiche. I present it in the spirit of peace, love and understanding, so those losers at the Forfar Bridie People's Front had better not accuse me of hectoring or organise someone to slag me off in the National.  And who knows what the Deep Fried Mars Bar Cult will think of it?  They probably don't know themselves, not yet having had their instructions from Central Control.  God, it's a minefield out there.

To a Macaroni Pie

Fair fa’ your sharp, acidic tang

Great Chieftain o’ the Scotch Pie gang!

Ye staun aboon the whole shebang

Steak, Mince or Mutton

Sworn foe of every hunger pang

And strainin’ button!

Behind the Co-Op checkout’s shield

Ye stand in majesty revealed

Proud pasta tubes in pastry sealed

Wi’ milky sheen

And topped wi’ grated cheese congealed

Like plasticine.

His lunch see rustic Labour crave

And bung ye in the microwave

Until your stodgy guts behave

Like lava streams

And scalded diners rant and rave

Wi’ anguished screams.

What setting suits your charms the best?

A banquet for an honoured guest?

Or watching Strictly in a vest?

Each maun be prized.

The eve of a blood glucose test?

That’s no’ advised.

Is there that owre his wilted greens

Or trumpety Aduki beans

Or juices packed wi’ carotenes

An’ mingin’ flavour

Regards this dish for kings an’ queens

Wi’ stern disfavour?

Poor devil!  See him at the gym

Astride a treadmill to keep trim

Sae puritanical and prim

That joy’s forbidden!

The wind could sweep him on a whim

Intae a midden.

But mark the pasta-nurtured chiel!

Life holds for him a rich appeal

The cauld blast canna mak him kneel

Or idly drift

He’s blubbered like an Arctic seal

And hard to shift.

 

Ye Powers wha strive for mankind’s good

And keep them healthy, fit and rude

Auld Scotland wants nae rabbit food

That maks her bony

But one thing stirs her gratitude:

Baked Macaroni!

 

A Good New Year

How was New Year for you?  Did you sing shang-a-lang and run with the gang, zimmer frame and allergy to Jackie Bird permitting?  Perhaps you favoured Elaine C Smith’s 1970s sitting room, first-footed by the Sturgeons to the fizzing, popping accompaniment of apoplectic Unionists? Or did you actually get up off your bahookie and hit the streets, stripping the world’s most humungous willow on the Royal Mile or toasting marshmallows in the warm glow of a burning hotel?

Wherever you were when the bells sounded, I hope 2016 will be a good year for you.  I happily declare these good wishes universal, in the spirit of free prescriptions and bus travel for over-60s.  Yes, I accept the inevitability of some recipients being complete ratbags.  But it’s too complicated to tart up my blog with a login screen involving a mind probe or, for Willie Rennie’s benefit, a tricky piece of colouring in, so what else can I do?

Maybe, in the time-honoured tradition of sleekit politicians, I should hastily qualify the meaning of “good”.  If you’re a Labour, Tory or Lib Dem looking forward to the Holyrood election, may your party come comfortably in the top six.  If you’re David Cameron, may you always be where you belong, in the company of swine.  If you’re Tony Blair, may your cell in The Hague have good-quality wallpaper.  And if you’re Alistair Carmichael, may justice constantly follow in your footsteps. Oh, one wee suggestion for that last one:  any chance we could replace the word “justice” with “an incontinent seagull”?

You’ll probably have some New Year resolutions sorted out, perhaps chiselled embarrassingly on a piece of stone in your back garden.  In case you haven’t, the pinhead patricians of Country Life have come up with a spiffing idea: “Clean For The Queen”, encouraging the UK’s peasant classes to pick up their damn litter as a special 90^th birthday present for Her Majesty, rather than as part of the intrinsic self-respect of a sovereign people.

Now, I’m no fan of litter, despite the state of my study suggesting that I love it so much I keep bringing it home.  Whenever I feel my curmudgeonly powers fading, a weary glimpse of the M90’s besplattered grass verges is enough to get me snarling impotently again. If there’s a grown-up anti-littering campaign happening, only my innate politeness (oh, all right then, my fat-arsed laziness) stops me barging to the front of the queue, bin bag and tongs at the ready.

But even public relations superstar Boyd Tunnock wouldn’t be addle-brained enough to portray tidying the place up as a royal forelock-tugging exercise.  Her Maj ain’t exactly short of diamond-encrusted J-cloths and won’t notice any difference anyway, since she hasn’t been allowed to see a speck of dirt since 1936 and thinks the world smells of disinfectant. The likeliest thing it’ll motivate the serfs to do is organise a fleet of muck-spreaders to undertake a spray-fest at Sandringham. Jings, just when you reckon the UK Establishment’s finally plumbed the depths of idiocy, another couple of marbles trundle lazily out of its ear…

Never mind, class, here’s another off-the-peg resolution for us all to sign up to:  we must stop using the #SNPBad hashtag, because it makes Unionist bampots cry.  This was the Boxing Day brainchild of Magnus Gardham, a grayscale photocopy of the Rev I M Jolly who occupies space in The Herald.  “It contributes to an infantilised political culture,” said Magnus, the guy who once smeared John Nicolson for owning a flat. 

The imperial press corps may not have many original ideas, but it sure can spot a bandwagon hirpling creakily around the hillside.  No sooner had Gardham’s brain-burp rippled across the interweb than several other commentators were coming out in sympathy. “It’s outrageous that we’re not taken seriously when we hold the SNP to account,” they whined, failing to observe that hashtag hilarity was actually a sane and measured response to their pusillanimous pish.

“But hang on,” interjected some pro-Indy essayists who, unlike simple-minded comedy bloggers, actually comprehend nuance. “Isn’t there a real point here?  Isn’t shouting #SNPBad just being glib and stifling debate?”  Well, I’d be careful conceding too much ground to the forces of darkness, or before you know it they’ll be using your rib-cage as a glockenspiel, but I’d acknowledge that on occasion some folks have taken it a wee bit far.  Still, that just means we need to keep a sense of proportion, not that we have to accept every piece of outrageous SNP-bashing burble-parp with a pat on the head and a concerned expression.

In the end, some things are so risible that you just have to laugh heartily.  Maybe our resolution for 2016 should be to relax and do a great deal more chuckling.  Medical experts say it’s life-enhancing and I don’t reckon there’s going to be any shortage of material.

Everybody's Plans for Christmas 2015

Hey there, online stalkers!  Fancy a sneaky glimpse into the seasonal activities of the “so-called” great and good?  They don’t just disappear because we stop giving a tinker’s cuss about them for 24 hours, you know.

So, with thanks to Mr Capaldi for the loan of his Tardis, let’s zip across the timeline and see what everybody’s planning to get up to once they’ve finished unwrapping Santa’s goodies…

Alistair Carmichael MP (oh, how that appellation grates) will take delivery of 365 pairs of flame-retardant underpants, which should last him a whole year as long as he only speaks once a day.  Needless to say, he’ll add the cost to his legal fees claim, itemised as “briefs”.

Kezia Dugdale will spend the day gazing at the Forth Road Bridge, wearing her disappointed face.

Derek McKay MSP, the SNP’s Mr Fixit, will travel throughout the land on Cloud Nine, mending potholes, fixing faulty boilers, replacing slates on storm-damaged roofs and, most importantly, arranging some bloody interview training for his SNP colleagues.

Gary Robertson, whose pre-Christmas Good Morning Scotland conversation with Derek is destined to be an online classic, will spend the day spitting rivets.  In an ironic twist, the folk working on the Forth Road Bridge will find these extremely helpful.  Merry Christmas, Gary!

David Torrance will publish a new unauthorised biographical work, Derek McKay: My Part In His Downfall, written in the space of 20 minutes and based on Wikipedia, a couple of random Tweets and the advice of a gypsy crone. The Waterstones price of “we’ll give you 50p to take the damn thing away” will ensure a few sales, albeit mostly in households where one table leg is shorter than the other three.

Donald Trump will launch his personal brand of eau de cologne, Trump Mist, produced by bottling his farts.  He’ll then order a drone strike on Trumpton for image rights theft and disassociate himself from Nellie the Elephant on the grounds that she’s a “stoopid broad”.  Finally, as his approval ratings soar higher than Jackie Bird’s left eyebrow, he’ll hurl insults at the crew of the International Space Station because he’s run out of targets on Earth.

John Swinney will find a 5p piece in his Christmas pudding and miraculously use it to dual the A9, put fairy lights on the Queensferry Crossing and get started on an oil fund.

Jackie Baillie will swallow the 5p and claim that by not spending it on any of the Swinney items she somehow has 10p, which can be used to offset George Osborne’s non-existent tax credit clawbacks, end world hunger, fund a mission to Mars and still leave enough to buy five magic beans.

Willie Rennie will call for an enquiry after he breaks his tooth on the 5p in his Christmas pudding, his greetin’ face turns all the satsumas sour and the joke in his cracker turns out to be a final demand for £800,000 from Police Scotland.

Tricia Marwick, Holyrood’s Presiding Officer, will delightedly unwrap a brand new light-sabre sent by the makers of Star Wars, who have witnessed her numpty-skewering powers with awe and want to offer her a part in the next movie as a galactic referee.

James Kelly MSP will consolidate his reputation as the worst player of Musical Chairs in the history of the human race.  His excuse of being unable to sit down because he can’t find his arse with both hands will, as usual, fail to impress the panel of 6-year-old judges.

David Cameron’s present of a boar’s head sporran will be the talk of Chipping Norton.

Eleanor Bradford, BBC Scotland’s medical misery correspondent, will discreetly insert a shedload of laxatives into Christmas dinner at Glasgow’s Super-Duper-Hospital.

Jeremy Corbyn will ruin the whole occasion no matter what he does.  If he doesn’t issue a festive message he’ll be cancelling Christmas, and if he does he’ll be behaving like flaming Royalty.  If he puts on a Santa outfit he’ll be brazenly wearing the Red Flag and offering something for nothing, and if he doesn’t he’ll be a humourless wonk who enjoys crushing little children’s dreams.  If he protests to IPSO he’ll be a gutless coward, and if they find in his favour the Sun will print a retraction so tiny that bacteria can trample it underfoot.

Blairite conspirators in the Parliamentary Labour Party will exchange anti-Corbyn messages hidden in mince pies and look forward to the day when they can knife Jeremy in the front, back, side and soles of his feet, before relaunching Labour as the acronym Tony always intended it to be:  Loosely Assembled Bunch Of Unprincipled Ratbags.

Iain Duncan Smith will feel an eerie chill gnawing at the fabric of his being.  But don’t worry, he’ll just throw another benefits claimant on the fire.

Iain Gray MSP will gaze at the array of dog biscuits on the shelves of his local Morrison’s, wondering if they do them in Golden Retriever flavour.

Alex Salmond, bored with simply walking across Strichen Lake, will turn it into wine and serve it to his Christmas Day guests.  The Herald, egged on by the Scotch Whisky Association, will concoct a slavering SNPBad headline accusing him of breaching European free trade regulations.

Lawson Carjack MSP, the Scottish Tories’ answer to Anton du Beke, will promote the lost art of dancing by inviting Ruth Davidson to join him in a seasonal military two-step.  Unfortunately, in a fit of over-enthusiasm about the “military” part, she’ll turn up in a tank and accidentally flatten him.  He’ll be rushed to Glasgow’s Super-Duper Hospital, where the “Bradford special” Christmas dinner will give him a massive case of diahorrea. This, despite his injuries, will keep him dancing all night long.

Nicola Sturgeon will spend the day kicking ass.  Hey, it’s what she does – why should Christmas be any different?