Around 35 couples enjoyed our annual St Andrew’s Dinner and Dance on Saturday 30th November 2019. The dinner and dance was in a new, much less formal format, and it was a great success.

The new venue, Chester Golf Club, provided a sumptuous dinner in a friendly setting. Kicking off with a superb starter of smoked salmon, pickled vegetables and chive mayo salad, there followed Haggis, neeps and tatties, a main of fillet of free range chicken whisky and shallot cafe ole with vegetables, Cranachan for pudding and finished with Coffee and shortbread.

There were no formal speeches although our President, Professor Sandy MacLennan, did provide a short introduction to the proceedings interspersed with a few jokes. Jim Lester also made a few comments mainly around Sandy’s football team (Partick Thistle) that had just been thrashed.

Some traditions of course remain, the “Haggis” was addressed by the Vice-President, Professor Rob Marrs. The Haggis was of course piped in by the Associations's piper, Scott Lindsay.

Then, onto the dancing with Nicol McLaren and his Glencraig Scottish Dance Band providing both the music and instructions for those unskilled in Scottish country dancing. There were all the usual favourites, including amongst others; the Gay Gordons, Canadian Barn Dance, Dashing White Sergeants, the Military two-step, Strip-the-Willow and finishing with a seemingly never-ending Orcadian Reel. A final tradition was of course the company singing “Auld Land Syne”.

The new, less-formal approach for our dinner and dance to celebrate St Andrew’s night was a great success, enjoyed by all and hopefully provides a blueprint for the future. Tickets will be at a premium next year.