unexpected encounter.

[couyalair]

When I boarded the bus this afternoon, I was surprised to hear the driver announce to the passengers in Spanish "Here comes the Scot."
Roar of approval from the passengers! The only spare seat was right among a group of middle-aged Italians, who proceeded to ask questions and take photos. The photographer's comment was "This is to show we have taken part in an interesting inter-cultural encounter." Not only questions about the kilt, mainy about the name of colourful plants and interesting buildings along the way
All very good-natured, the conversations livened up a dull journey. Even though Spanish and Italian have the same Latin roots, pronunciation differences can lead to some confusion and a lot of laughs.

Viva el kilt, without which no-one would have spoken to me.

Martin

[skirtyscot]

So, how much Scottish blood have you in your veins?

[JohnH]

This is a bad joke but I can't help it. Anybody can have Scotch in his veins. All he has to do is drink some Johnnie Walker or some other Scottish whisky.

John

[couyalair]

If it's the label on the bottle that determines your origins, then I'm 0% Scot, 100% Mediterranean.
The bottles in my cupboard are all labeled either "red wine" or "olive oil".

Martin

[skirtingtoday]

Looking at the bottles in MY cupboard, I must be a real mixed-up mongrel!

Great tale Martin - viva el kilt indeed!

Ross

[Kirbstone]

An amusing tale that Martin the kilt wearer is labelled 'The Scot'. I suppose one can forgive them for that. I'm also 0% Scot, but 100% Irish, which is Celt of a different colour, so I don't need to have whiskey on board to qualify.
We keep our drinks cabinets firmly locked, as our resident daughter is a 'reforming' alcoholic and the wine rack in the kitchen, for instance has nothing more destructive than tonic water there. She occupies our 'Studio', a wooden complex with its own entrance 200 yards away beyond the boating lake, but regularly raids our house/kitchen for whatever she wants, be it laptop time on our Wi-fi, or foodstuffs/dogfood, you name it, hence the locked-away drinks. Sad, but there it is!

Tom K.

[Stu]

To deviate off topic slightly...

One of my students was formerly a geneticist (he is now training to be a teacher). He told me that genetic research indicates that the typical Englishman is about 95% "Britannic" in origin, the remaining 5% is Anglo Saxon, Nordic and one or two other heritages. In other words, English people and Scots, Welsh and Irish people really are of kindred blood. This is borne out by historians who have been coming to the conclusion that, in spite of the huge impact they made on British culture and their inception of the English language, only a few thousand Angles, Saxons and Jutes actually landed on British shores in the Dark Ages, and even fewer Nordic people came and settled, and rather than being driven out of England, the post-Roman Britannic tribes largely remained and co-existed with these Continentals.

So the native peoples of the UK really are pretty much the same people - whatever differences do exist are largely cultural. I guess that means I can wear a kilt after all.

Stu

[couyalair]

Since every generation gets a new mix of genes, I have always felt that the current fad of talking about one's roots is just an excuse for doing whatever we want to do. An example appropriate to the unbifurcated theme : if you fancy wearing a kilt, you'll go searching for Scottish or celtic ancestors. If you fancy being negro (or whatever the current pc term may be) you'll go looking for African ancestors, I suppose. But whatever you go looking for, you'll probably find only a few male forebears, since the females don't seem to have the right to pass on their names and are consequently difficult to pin down -- although the only sure line of genetic heritage is of course the female line.

In any case, we are all a mixture of things; we know that there were celtic peoples in Britannia when the Romans arrived, but the Island was already populated before then by other ethnic groups that left plenty of genes even if they left little trace of their language or culture. The Romans were quite open to other races, provided those people adopted Roman culture, so the legions brought along more genes from North Africa, Anatolia and the Middle East than from the Tiber valley. The Angles, Saxons and Normans added whatever their forebears had been mating with. In more recent times, Jews came after being kicked out of Spain and Portugal, protestants came after being kicked out of France, and heaven knows who else got in through the back door. So I am quite sure I would show traces of all these peoples, if such things could be analyzed in a blood sample.
I was born and brought up in Great Britain, and lived there 21 years. But having spent the subsequent years mainly in French-speaking countries, I now find that I have little empathy with other Brits. So what is my identity?
English? ... because my parents were English?
Scottish? ... because I like kilts and Scottish music and dancing?
French? ... because that's the language I speak, and my children and grandchildren are French?
Or simply European? ... because I am more likely to empathize and chat comfortably with other western europeans than with people from the other continents?
Or all of these?
I can see no objective reason for tying one's identity to one's genes; it's more a matter of culture and one's own penchants.

Martin -- a European liberated male, generally regarded as the eccentric who won't wear trousers like everyone else.