Six Nations wake from slumber

As winter turns to Spring

For tribal warfare on the pitch

It’s a Celts and Saxons thing

They’ll be singing hymns and arias

From the Tiber to the Tay

And the week feels that much longer

As we wait for Saturday

And the squads are called together

From places far and wide

There will be sunshine and foul weather

There will be shir...

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Highlands and Speyside 

whisper my name

Single malt barleys

they’re not all the same

Some speak smooth vanilla

rich fruits, caramel and cream

Others boast a dry bite

smoky and bitter with peat

Delicately matured

in oak casks of all kinds

Diverse finishes of bourbon 

sherry, ports and rare finds

The greater the age

the steepe...

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She’s a mistress that hides her secrets under fret

A flash of Victorian ankle maybe all that you receive

Her true joys often hidden beneath dreich petticoats

She’s the master of mystery, of guile and disguise

The tales she tells echo round the glens

Off barren croft walls and empty harbours

Her booming, brooding silence hides voices

Lost on the winds of time, home, yet no...

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Wanting life easy but living it hard                     

Dons his sick kilt and has one for the road

Gone to repeat the story he’s been told   

In the bar where he hasn’t been barred.             

Scotland is playing, they’ll win or they’ll lose      

He orders a pint, the fifth of the night                

Loneliness fades and the world becomes right

An amber-flecked al...

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Lets open up the country file

Lets find a place to go

Get up close to nature

Weather sun or rain or snow

Valley, lake or mountain

There is beauty all around

Yorkshire dale or Lake District

The jewels in Britain’s crown.

Lets get up close to nature

Lets go and explore

On foot or bike or horse back

In land or by the shore

England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales

There...

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Dunes...

And then the sand flowed like the tide

Shifting the land at the wave edge of the sea

A vast striated plane of drifting whirling grains:

Aged dunes lost to the wail will of the wind.

As we walked close by the sea suck and ripple

The bound beach rose and swallowed our grounded feet

We seemed to be free floating sand cloud high

In the sandsmoke drifts rushing to their...

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The Unicorn to the Lion
By Robert C. Mackie

The Lion and the Unicorn once fighting for the Crown,
Now, Lion, said the Unicorn, this fighting’s got me down.

Please keep your Barnett Formula, and all One Nation Tories,
Keep antisocial myopia and national fairy stories.

‘Cos Scotland’s a nation, although you doubt, social justice is its charter,
Smith and Hume its philosophers, no need f...

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A native American, Hawkeye the Noo

Emigrated to Scotland in '72

He loved deep fried Mars bars and the odd Irn Bru

But now he knows not what to do

The mountains and plains were a wonderful yardstick

As his ancestors populated desert to Arctic

But Hawkeye he settled for a wigwam in Partick

But now he knows not what to do

He's always been proud to call Scotland his h...

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SCOTLAND

Scotland, beautiful land, land of the sky, clouds
hugging your mountains, mist in the glens.
Deep black lochs full of mystery and monsters,
age-old secrets for very few to find.
Everyone can see the beauty of this land,
next to England but a million miles away.
Once we were enemies but now friends,
a country with so many moods and colours,
the sky, timeless in her ...

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