Kilts

Here are my boys in their kilts - Léon in the informal one for a primary school leavers' dance when he was 11 and Marcel in the formal one for a high school leavers' ball when he was 18.

Now we're in Denmark, Léon has taken it upon himself to wear his kilt to school occasionally, and given there are no uniforms here it always comes as a nice surprise to his classmates, the wider school population and even the village in general when he suddenly takes a fancy.

One rule he's set himself is always to wear it when he's chosen to give cultural talks to his English class, which he's done a few times. Next week he's to give a talk about childhood in Scotland, so he's made up 20 conkers on strings - Danes weirdly use conkers to make cutesy little animals rather than for all-out warfare. Odd folk!

He's also decided to teach them some songs - so far he's printed out 'Ye cannae shove yer granny aff a bus', 'The jeely piece song' and 'Donald where's yer troosers' (complete with his own translations into Danish) - that will be interesting amongst Funen teenagers. He really
relishes his talks an puts his heart and soul into them - often entertaining the class for the whole hour or more. He usually bakes shortbread or makes tablet too. And he's even upgraded his black watch to Buchanan tartan now he's bigger too.

I had to laugh tonight when he was talking about songs - Anna sheepishly told us that when she was at nursery, aged 3, she had been made to learn 'Donald where's your troosers' and said she couldn't understand the lyrics. Given she was used to hearing Scots, I struggled to understand her problem, but given she couldn't read at the time, she had misheard the lyrics as 'Donald wears your troosers', so couldn't for the life of her understand where the blowing kilt came into it, if Donald was already wearing someone else's trousers! That made me laugh quite a lot.😂