I amna fou' sae muckle as tired - deid dune.
It's gey and hard wark coupin' gless for gless
Wi' Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like,
And I'm no' juist as bauld as aince I wes.

from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
BY HUGH MACDIARMID

for Cruvie and Gilsanquhar read Appleby and Wiseman, our Scottish visitors, who have lead me astray with my welcoming Cava cocktail being matched by their Smirnoff cinnamon flavoured vodka with flakes of gold leaf, a recipe guaranteed to give a full nights sleep and "a sair heid in the morn".

I chanced upon this thistle in a remote field full of flowering kale and thought again how much Catalonia and Scotland resemble each other, even the weather today is grey and impending dreich.

With a week to go until the launch of the campaign which should hopefully lead to the emergence of Scotland as an independent nation with full self determination, I was reminded that thistles bloom in unlikely areas and in hostile conditions.