St Andrews Day.

 St Andrews Day.

With Christmas and Chanukah now weeks away and the glad tidings of the season already upon us, it is hard to imagine where the time has gone. The ageing process should be a graceful one and undoubtedly this is the case but how time flies indeed. The year of 2024 has been rather like any other year in decades long since gone but perspective is a special thing and this year has of course been eventful, dramatic certainly, traumatic at times but joyful and then disappointing for some if not others.

We all wish we'd had enough time to occupy our hours much more constructively than we were hoping we would. There are formidable tasks that were carried out, there were friends and family we saw briefly but happily but then there were enemies we'll never regret ditching and dumping unceremoniously. We might have missed out on important deadlines, reached for the stars one moment, fulfilled those elusive ambitions but then discovered it just wasn't good enough. We'd have to do better but still, we did try and nobody could possibly have accused of us anything but dedication to the cause.  

And so to the end of this year and what have we done. Another year over to quote the masterful lyricist John Lennon. Tomorrow marks the beginning of, traditionally, the busiest month of the calendar year. December brings with it yet more shorter days when darkness falls over Britain at tea time and the mind is deluded into thinking that it's time for some shut eye and a good night's sleep. The first frost and ice has now arrived on our doorstep, vast quantities of snow have been predicted by the Daily Express for the umpteenth time since July and before you know it, we'll all be preparing for Easter.

Christmas seems to get earlier and earlier, a time of the year when spectacular TV advertising campaigns for all those prestigious British supermarkets become more elaborate with every passing year. They invariably involve gallons of bottled wine, huge helpings of turkeys the size of your dining room, chocolates to damage your waistline for seemingly an eternity and brussel sprouts that are rarely eaten at any other time of the year. 

So today seems as good a time as any other to remind you that it's St Andrews Day. You remember St Andrews Day. It's that day in bonny Scotland where the good, honest and law abiding folk of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, the Grampians  and the often turbulent islands up North, let themselves go, shaking off their inhibitions and celebrating life in all its rich diversity. The Scots really do know how to have a good time because every Hogmany and New Year's Eve, they remind you of how to party the night away unashamedly.  

Although not quite the jolly knees up and boozy bacchanalia of New Year's Eve, the whisky distilleries are still plundered and the beer flows like a thousand waterfalls. The whole of Scotland will retire to its local watering hole and high street pub in anticipation of the one event of the year when the drunken delights of the evening culminate in jigging around swords, flinging the tartan kilts around with blissful abandon and, of course, blowing on the bagpipes. Now this has been going on for so many centuries in Scotland that maybe we've taken St Andrews Day for granted. 

Every August, Edinburgh welcomes its vast populations into its street theatres, comedy clubs, bars and then onto its many stages. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is that yearly homage to British art and culture. It's been going on since time immemorial, a magical exposition of everything zany, eclectic, creative and bohemian. It shouts out the virtues of literature, the craft of comedy at its most refined, music of all genres and performances from all and sundry. 

Today Scotland will remember high summer on the final day of autumn because that's what the Scots do with enormous relish. They sing the praises of Rabbie Burns, Scotland's greatest poet and Sir Walter Scott, Scotland's most literate and outstanding of novelists. They remember the great shipyards of Glasgow, staring mournfully at those once beautiful tenements that are now shopping malls and then long for a time when those grand old Scotsmen and women once walked in the hallowed footsteps of Bonny Prince Charlie and William Wallace. 

Recently, Scotland lost one of its most controversial of politicians. Sir Alex Salmond was a feisty, gritty and combative politician who became the First Minister of Scotland and did rub up his critics the wrong way but then changed opinions when Salmond did something that met with their approval. You would have thought Salmon would have thoroughly enjoyed today because the patriotic inside him would have been mightily proud of Scotland's notable achievements. 

Devolution and independence have always been bones of contention in Scotland. The Scottish assembly continues to be their jewel in their crown. But Scotland has never made any secret of its utter contempt and detestation for England, the Sassenachs, those folk across Hadrian's Wall who just get on their nerves. But today is different or Scotland hope it will be. They'll get drunk tonight and then sing at the tops of their voices because that karaoke is such a splendid idea. 

Then they'll think of the once gifted folk singer and guitarist who became one of the finest and most delightful of all comedians. Billy Connolly is a national treasure, the man who lit up the comic landscape of not only Scotland but the rest of the world with those colourful profanities, the bawdy jokes that shook us to the foundations but has now kept us heaving with delicious laughter for years and years. Connolly's telling observations on society, childhood and his life as a docker in his younger days, filled the halls, clubs and pubs of Britain with blustery gales of hilarity.

But then Connolly conquered Hollywood and converted the Americans overnight with those vulgar witticisms and endless stories about the rich tapestry of life. He appeared in films, late night chat shows and typified the indomitable spirit of Scotland. In fact, Connolly is now regarded as a master of his craft, a wonderful exponent of the graphic and physical sketch where all of the taboo subjects are just repeated over and over again.

And so it is that Scotland will resort to Connolly's saucy sense of humour, those vinegary gags that have kept most of us rolling in the aisles and tickled every bone in our body. Scotland will just be doing what Scotland do best, raising a pint or hundred to the underdog, the football team who always flatter to deceive and then achieve the impossible when the odds are so heavily stacked against them. 

Down South in North London, we will be acknowledging St Andrews Day with a pint of Tennents or two. We'll Take the High Road, blurt out or verse or two of Auld Lang's Syne even if it's almost exactly a month before we should. We shall imagine the mist-shrouded mountains in the Highlands, the drifting snows that begin as sleet but then settle on the summit. We shall think of everything symbolically Scottish, the glens and lochs, the stirring anecdotes about Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, the kings and queens from another age and then St Andrews Day itself. It's time to puff out your chest, Scotland. This is your day. Oh for the swelling pride.