Words and Burns Night.

I've found myself worrying about 'losing' words lately.  I know it's not just me, my friends say the same but it's very annoying and the worry of dementia is real.  My aunt has just been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimers I'm not sure which, and it's so sad.  She is a very educated, smart lady and to see her lose so many words and sentences is sad.  This post came about because for the life of me, I cannot think of the word I wanted to use to reply to a comment on my last post.  I still can't get it.  I could draw the thing I want the word for, I know everything about it, how to use it, how to get one and yet, still the word has gone and the more I try to think of it, the more I can't summon it to my brain!  Occasionally when this happens I have to go to hubby and say, what's the word I want then I describe what I want and just as he says it I know the word!  A skip that was the word I wanted!!  See, I just have to mention hubby and the word came to me lol.  I'm not sure if a skip is a thing in other countries, its a container (about the size of a car) that is brought to your house and you fill it with all sorts of detritus and its taken away to be dumped or recycled depending on the company you use.  We use the recycling one although it costs a bit more but at least you know it will be recycled and not into landfill.

My friend in Manchester phoned yesterday and as we were chatting she started a story and suddenly stopped and said, 'have I told you this already?'  I laughed and said no, its ok carry on!  She said since lockdown #1 she feels like she's losing the ability to converse properly with people and she's not sure who she's told what to!  I know what she means.

It's Burns Night here in Scotland.  We don't normally do anything but a lot of people attend (in normal circumstances) a Burns Night.  Burns nights are usually great fun, with a meal of haggis, mashed potatoes, mashed turnip (swede in England) and whisky sauce, often followed by Cranachan which is a rich creamy dessert with raspberries, cream, whisky, honey, sugar and toasted oatmeal.  It's delicious but you can't eat much, especially if you're full of haggis!  After the meal with lots of poems recited there follows a ceilidh (pronounced kaylay).  I'm not sure if it's still a thing but in our day at school, every child learned all the Scottish ceilidh dances.  It was the bane of our life that we had to learn the dances for the Christmas dance and the biggest dread of all was no-one picking you to dance.  Oh the shame if you were left.  Normally the teachers had to all but drag the boys over to the girls (and vice versa) and all sorts of threats were made of the teacher picking a partner for you!  We learned The Gay Gordon; Strip The Willow; The Dashing White Sergeant to name a few and it was probably the most useful thing we learned in school!  One of the few things we learned that we continue to use in real life!  As well as ceilidhs we have these dances at weddings and often at dinner dances too.

 

I have a haggis for tonight.  We love haggis, though you don't want to know what's in one!  We won't be dancing after it although that's a shame because there is little thats more fun than a good ceilidh!  'Should auld aquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind, should auld aquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne'  - Robert Burns