Here we are again at Burns Day, commemorating the birth in 1759 of Scottish bard Robert Burns. It is an occasion for steamed haggis and a great bowl of atholl brose, which is a concoction of whisky and oatmeal.
It struck us this morning (after a few mugs of atholl brose) that Burns is the only writer whose birthdate is celebrated. There is no Shakespeare Day, Tolstoy Day, Proust Day, Jane Austen Day. The closest equivalent is Bloomsday, which doesn't fall on James Joyce's birthday, but on June 16, the day in Joyce's "Ulysses" on which we follow the peregrinations of the hapless Leopold Bloom.
We're not sure how to rectify this, although we would like to have a P.G. Wodehouse Day and a Dashiell Hammett Day.
More haggis, please. More Scotch.
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