“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
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One of the highlights of my summer growing up involves a tradition that appears a wee bit strange to many of my friends living in other parts of Scotland, across the UK, or beyond. And that’s our annual village gala day. It’s usually marked by the council coming around the week before to tie plastic bunting to the lampposts (the section directly outside my house is red, white and blue in contrast to the standard rainbow of the rest of the street. I’m absolutely sure that has nothing to do with the prominent pro-indy sticker in our window…) and then on the morning itself – usually a Saturday – when some of the houses flagrantly breach copyright and trademark laws by decorating their houses with various cartoon characters, superheroes or some other commercially exploitable symbol of Capitalism directed at kids this year before finally, just after most folk have probably woken up…the band starts playing.
The Common Green 