A Hebridean Incitement to Battle

That braggart has it coming to him. Take the cork out, Hamish, and throw it away. We will not be needing it again, unless perhaps to stop up his flatulence and send him tight-lipped and tight-arsed back to where he came from.

Who does he think he is, strutting about as if he owns the place? Repulsive is the way he twists his lip when he gives an order. Pour me three or four fingers, and a splash of water in it, and I’ll tell you what he can be doing with his orders.

No, no, we have had quite enough of his insolence. In my father’s day it would not have been tolerated. Then you would have seen the claymore fetched from the hayrick, and the targe, metaphorically speaking, from under the peat stack. Aye, go on, another will not go amiss.

Soon enough he will know the reward he will get for sticking his nose in where it is not wanted. A bloody nose it will be. We may be hard to rouse, but once we are up we do not readily sit down again. Is a dram not the very spark to set the heather blazing?

Have you seen the nose on him? Like a turnip, it is. I could lop it top and bottom and it would not be much diminished, but the sheep would still reject it as fodder beneath their dignity. He is an apology for a man. Ten of him would not make one of us. Tip it up, man, tip it up.

The arrogance in his voice is enough to stir me to violence. Last night I heard him braying through in the lounge bar. He thinks he is better than us, but we are better than him. If it had not been for the women present I would have told him to his face.

If he turns up tonight I will settle with him in the car park. The tyres of his Range Rover will be flat and if he wants to know who let the air out I will not be the first to deny it, no indeed. Yes, Hamish, I will, since you ask.