‘My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go’ – Robbie Burns
“You studied where?” – this is the general response I get when telling people where I went to university. Granted, it’s unusual to study quite so far from home. Out of my entire sixth form, where about 80 students planned to embark on degree courses, only five or six were heading outside England.
The distance wasn’t always easy. Being a six-hour train ride from home, I often envied my Scottish pals who could pop out for a Sunday roast with family before returning to finish essays due on Monday. However, at a recent St Andrew’s Day dinner, the spiced smell of haggis and the sound of bagpipes reminded how much I’d loved the ‘land of the brave.’ Despite being back in England for a year and a half, there are things I still miss:
OLD HABITS
Scotland loves a good tradition. Whether it be dinners for Burn’s Night, a street ceilidh for St Andrew’s Day or a torch procession for Hogmanay (New Year), there’s no shortage of celebration. A favoured Scottish custom of mine was the Highland Games in Summer, where brawny men in kilts challenged themselves to all sorts of bizarre physical challenges. At a Highland Games I attended in Ballater, Charles and Camilla paid a (very brief) visit from Balmoral! Highland dancing is always present at any Scottish event and in my second year of uni, I took up dance classes in it. Not only is Highland Dance fun and lively, it’s also an extreme cardio workout that does wonders for leg toning.
THE FAMOUS ACCENT
I’ve loved the Scottish accent long before Lewis Capaldi made it trendy. It’s got a lovely Celtic lilt to it, though it can be a little hard for us Southerners to follow sometimes! On more than one occasion, I’d strike up a friendly conversation with my taxi driver to fill the silence, only to find I couldn’t understand a single word of his response, leaving no choice but to nod along politely for the rest of the journey. Across my time in Scotland, I picked up some slang here and there. The first time I heard someone say they’d been ‘steaming’ at the weekend, I thought they’d been working through a pile of ironing! In fact, they’d been knocking back the whisky! I’ve carried a few precious Scottish-isms across the border with me, namely ‘pals,’ ‘wee’ and, my personal favourite, ‘nae bother.’
SCOTTISH FOODS
Although I’ve never eaten a deep-fried Mars bar, there’s other Scottish delicacies I still crave. On breakfast menus in Scotland, the ‘Full Scottish Breakfast’ is not just a nationalistic twist on the British fry-up. A full Scottish includes a potato scone and haggis, which I still miss in my full English breakfasts down here. The delicious Tunnock’s tea cakes are a Scottish institution. There was even a Tunnock’s appreciation society at my university! However, the biggest pride of Scotland’s cuisine is, without doubt, Irn-Bru. This orange caffeinated beverage reinvigorates the soul with a rush of sugar to the brain that could power you to the top of Ben Nevis. I am told that Scotland is the only country in the world where another fizzy drink out-sells Coca-Cola. The bright orange Irn-Bru lorries were a regular sight around town and sleep-deprived students are probably one of their biggest markets!
ONE MORE THING…
“Do you pay for your prescriptions?” asks the pharmacist in my home-town chemist. “Yes,” I say grudgingly, thinking back with longing on a time when I lived across the border and wasn’t charged a penny. It’s a small yet notable gripe of mine that I still carry.
I’ll be returning to my university town for a wedding in November and I plan to lap up all the Scottish delights that I’ve missed for so long. Perhaps I’ll even brave a deep-fried Mars bar…
