Introducing a Bloggi Bag guest columnist: The Scotsman

This week introduces what will become a regular Bloggi Bag guest column from the beautiful and underpublicized country of Scotland. Why? Because the Scottish are funnier than us. Below is the first introduction:

I’m Scottish. I’ll set a few things straight right from the start in case anybody’s unenlightened with regards to the habits of your average Scot. I’ve only ever worn a kilt once in my life and I’m not tight with my money; I just never seem to have that much - admittedly because I blow it as soon as I get it. I have mastered the mysteries of Krishna-consumerism. I spend freely but don’t acquire any material goods. I’m sure the barman said “Gouranga” the last time I got the drinks in. Right now I live in a city called Glasgow, in the southwest of Scotland. According to Camus, “the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.” So here goes.

I can’t speak for everybody in Glasgow; I don’t know them all. I’ll speak only for those that I do know. Some of the people that I know work in financial services. Some of the other people that I know work in IT, mostly supporting the financial services people. Then there’s a whole bunch of people that I know who provide essential services like teaching and health care to the other aforementioned bunch who work in and around financial services. Another bunch of people that have nothing to do with financial services make a reasonable living working for one of the relatively numerous universities in and around Glasgow. And finally there are the architects. I’m not sure how it happened but I count many architects amongst my friends.

Love? Like everybody else we love with passion, we love with pain and we love with joy. We love our partners, we love our friends, we love our family, we love our music and we love our football teams. We’re wary of showing our love. Only those very close to us receive unselfconscious demonstrative love. Everybody else has to wait until we gather to share a few drinks. That’s probably why we stay out late together every weekend. It’s during these precious moments that we show our love to our friends without inhibition or the use of our respective faculties. We throw off the shackles of dignity, self-respect and coherent thought and talk shit. It’s beautiful.

And finally there’s death. The causes of death are the same here as they are anywhere else. They just seem to happen a bit earlier in life. I won’t bore you with the details. Poor diet, alcohol, cigarettes – you get the picture. That kind of stuff shortens your lifespan. There is another more sinister way to die in this city but it involves morons and knives. Lets leave that nasty topic to another time.

So there you have it - work, love and death in Glasgow. I guess if you read between the lines then you’ll see that we work hard and play hard. No, that’s clichéd. It’s better to say that we live hard. But doesn’t everybody, no matter where they live? Frankly, I’m not interested. I’m just trying to end this piece so that I can get back to watching some TV. More soon.