On the second of February 2015 we had our school Burns Supper here at Johnstonebridge Primary School. We were going to have it on Friday the thirtieth of January but it got called off because of all the snow that had fallen and then had turned to ice!

We ended up re-scheduling for the Monday, even though it wasn’t the correct day to have our Burns Supper, but we still had all the food and entertainment we would have had on the Friday!

First we had to do the poetry competition. It was very good. Primary 7 had to recite a Robert Burns poem. Sharon, our classroom assistant, helped us with our poems and speeches. Jack Strawhorn did The Dying Death of Poor Mailie by Robert Burns. We had to judge each other.

Then it was back to Monday and we needed to get ready for our Burns Supper. Everybody was excited for the lunch and the winners had to read out their poem. The winners were …...  in 3rd place was Faye Sloan 2nd was Jack Strawhorn and in 1st place was …… Rory Sloan. We had to say our poems. Faye’s poem was a joint poem with her best friend Nyah and their poem was Cat Food Rap by Anne Armstrong. Jack’s poem was The Dying Death of Poor Mailie by Robert Burns and Rory’s poem was To a Mouse by Robert Burns.

After we had done the poetry competition we got on with the rest of the day.

Once the day was over the next day was the actual Burns Supper. First up we had all the speeches. We had the Address to the Haggis, the opening speech from the chairman (Jack Strawhorn), the stabbing the haggis with a really scary knife with a really scary person doing it (only joking). It was Lennon Wilson and he was really good at it. He had the knife in his hand and the speech in the other. He killed the haggis, demolished it! Luckily it wasn’t the haggis we were eating!   Jack Parry did the toast to the immortal memory and he enjoyed doing it. We also had the toast to the lassies and then the reply. The person who was doing the toast to the lassies was Rory Sloan and he was really funny. The girl who  was doing the reply was Kirsty Scott and she was also really funny too!

 We ate our dinner which was delicious. We had the traditional haggis, neeps and tatties. For pudding we had shortbread. We also had a choice of drink. We had blackcurrant, orange or water. A lot of people had packed lunches because they didn’t like haggis because it was the only thing that was on the menu! We all enjoyed the dinner and once we had finished we went outside to play. Some classes helped clean the tables and put them away. The classes that helped were the P7s, the P6s and some of the P5s.

And that was our Burns supper for another year. Our ancestors would have had Burns suppers and we’re trying to keep the tradition going. We have a Burns lunch every year. We really enjoy preforming them. 

By Jack Strawhorn, Jack Parry, Faye Sloan and Rory Sloan