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Want more fun and less stress? Live every minute to the full!
This is not an advert for lastmin.com but it asks a relevant question.
Fulfil the theme by calling your family and friends to your impromptu Burns Nicht a week or two either side of January 25th.
There's plenty in this collection of pages to guide you. It isn't illegal to hold it in February.
If it's not yet the third week in January when you read this then there's still time to get going.
If you want a piper put your region into your search engine followed by bagpiper.
Nottingham bagpiper gives 24000 results so take your pick!
If there is a problem contact me at
avrf23@dsl.pipex.com
Perhaps you would like to raise funds for charity as this site does. Perhaps it's the Rowing Club or the Bowling Club.
It doesn't matter - it's working together for a pupose that counts.
If you have children, raise funds for the school. Work with or on the Parent Teacher Association and with the Head Teacher.
Here are some suggestions regarding the lead-up to the event.
If the school invites the piper into the school, the CRB issue shouldn't be a problem with all the teachers present.
Ask parents to lend any Scottish-looking dolls as shown on the children's welcome page. There you will meet several volunteers. Their CRB results are a bit woolly but they're good at sorting out unruly pipers.
Before but more probably after Christmas, your piper could pipe for the school in the hall. He could explain parts of his uniform and ask questions such as “Who has been to Scotland?” The children would be fully involved in the event.
They could draw and paint in their classrooms later and produce items to use as decoration for the hall. Some of this output could be used on the menu and the tickets.
If there is an outward-going pupil who is also a Scot, you may have a candidate for the Address to the Haggis as given on the Age Concern Burns Supper page via the Link page.
That said, it doesn't mean that only Scots are eligible to speak at a Burns event.
There is the aspect of beyond-bedtime which can be discussed with the parents. Otherwise, perhaps a former pupil could do it.
There's a page dealing with the toasts.
When the classroom activities take place, as said, the children’s art etc output could be incorporated into tickets, the menu and a table-card plus the hall decoration so everything can be used, I hope. There’s masses on the internet, of course, to inspire the children,.
If a piper or anyone else who is confident enough talks to them in the hall, she/he could tell a story of “The Haggis-mound” and the life-cycle of the haggis. (Contact me for info.)
In the hall, the children could render “Scotland the Brave” in ‘ying, ying-a-ying-ying-ying ..’ fashion to imitate the pipes and bring the house down.
On my previous visits to schools, children’s creativity produced drawings, poems and stories of haggises, men in kilts, pipers, Scottish dancers, and you couldn’t imagine what else.
The McHelpers will come to the hall to suggest ideas. There’s generally been a few Scots children and some weren't backward in coming forward.
Later, any Scots teachers might answer questions while the pupils work.
By the time school staff have combined with the PTA and other volunteers, there will be scores of children who will ken weel there’s mair to Scotland than ‘Braveheart’.
If you are reading this in Brighton, Bordeaux or Bermuda, you can translate the next paragraph written for people in the West Midlands of England
Just before last Christmas 2007, I organised a ‘bag-pack’ at Morrison’s in Ross as a Scout Group fund-raising event. That netted £860. This is a ‘semi-suggestion’ to do the same on, say, January 10 09 via the PTA to publicise the Burns evening.
For a' that an' a' that
All bag-pack proceeds to the school fund. Add to that bag of cash what you make on the supper and raffle. Add all business and private donations.
Add to all that the enthusiam generated by all in the community being involved, children and all, and you have lived life to the full. So has all the community. Burns poem "A man's a man for a' that" comes to mind about people the world over who shall brithers be for a' that.
If there are only two targets, here they are:
Raise funds for a very worthwhile
organisation - your school or other entity
Everyone involved to enjoy being involved.
That should be enough to start the haggis rolling.
Yours aye
Alan Harrison
A note on the piper's uniform. Very rarely do I carry a blade, it's only when I pipe for a military-type occasion or funeral in full uniform. Other-wise the sgian-dhu in my sock is plastic.
Any piper would be willing to replace the sgian-dhu or do without it.
