This time of year, with the glow from the spirit of the Christmas season slowly fading to be replaced by the chronic glare of the computer screen, my inner being is buoyed, always, by a single thought: the end of the month will find me dressed in five pounds of pleated wool, an heirloom dagger stuffed into the top of my gartered hose and my palate eagerly anticipating the peaty burn of neat single-malt scotch. Trenchers of gushing entrails will be carted into a ballroom for several hundred septuagenarians (and some far fewer youngsters) to bear witness to an imported Scotsman address a plate of spiced minced meat as though 'twere ambrosia. Which assumption is far from wrong.
The skirling, droning wail of bagpipes will unleash itself in an aural cavalcade of emotion, and plaided lassies will step with light toes o'er and 'tween the recumbent blades of crossed claymores to that same ancient noise. We will shake hands and exchange pleasantries with a few men whose faces are known only once a year, but wherein is found a strange, small fraternity, the fostered flame of which glows dimly throughout the year so that it may blaze so bright this single night in homage to the man whose life was lived with such ardour for his too short time.
I know we will leave the ballroom with a glow only marginally attributable to the beverages lifted in successive toasts and we will repair to a smaller - more intimate - gathering in one final effort to revel in the camaraderie and the sense of having participated in something fleeting and increasingly rare and, thus, to be treasured all the more.
The last drink of the night will be port - it always is.
We will pass around the evening's programs and sign them so each man may add his to a growing collection whose only variation has been the colour, the menu and the placement of the same signatures year after year.
The dregs will sit in the bottom of the port glasses and the blaze of the early evening will again subside to a glow of anticipation for the next year as our camarilla of Burns revellers goes separate ways, sated for the nonce, but tinged with regret that the aura of the evening cannot be woven into a cloak and so keep travellers warm and comforted on the dark journey home through a winter's early morning.
