Mr Jennings, I take exception to your somewhat degrading description of a fine old Caledonian tradition, born in the mists of antiquity, and which is so evocative of the finer points of a magnificent cultural heritage, dating back as far as last Tuesday, and featuring the memorable acts and lives of such great national heroes as William the Gibson, Mel the Bruce and Liam Roy.

These exhibitions of refined and restrained gentility are not in the slightest to be compared with the wild and distressing antics of an unruly mob of drink-crazed, sodden, capering fools, egged on in their unspeakable pagan frenzy by a be-ribboned fool clutching a bladder on a stick and his half-insane crony squeezing the strains (and I use the term advisedly) of some tune calculated to whip the crowd into an orgy of bachanalian magnitude, from a fiendish instrument of torture.....

Such agonising scenes are even now being witnessed by innocent natives in the far-flung corners of the once great Empire. In the Americas, and even here in the Antipodean extremities, the diabolical machinations of Morris are being experienced.... Is there no end to your devilish plotting, sirrah?

No, sir, in Scotland there is no Morris. It's too Austin-tatious. They can't af-Ford it anyway. That's true, Riley it is.

The nicest thing about England and the english is that they can read this sort of twaddle about themselves and laugh. Not so much at it, as at themselves. God forbid that they should ever take to heart what the rest of the world thinks about them, or take themselves too seriously. Oh dear........ I think I'll run away now..