Alice Wyllie: 'Wha's like us? Damned if I know'

IN WHAT year was the Declaration of Arbroath signed? asks our pub quiz master. Before I have a chance to open my mouth, my team mate confidently jots down the answer.

"I'd have got that one," I whisper sullenly. I am not so much put out because he has managed to beat me to every answer in the Scottish history round of the quiz, but because he happens to be an Australian.

It wasn't until I took up with the Antipodean that I realised just how little I know about my own country. His head full of romantic notions of rugged Highland scenery and misty battlefields, he's forever asking me questions I can't really answer.

"So tell me more about this Pretty Prince Charlie?" he'll ask enthusiastically.

"It's Bonnie Prince Charlie," I'll say, before filling him in on what I know. "No, no, I know that stuff," he'll say with a laugh and a roll of his eyes that suggests even someone who grew up 10,000 miles away should have a grasp of the "basics", before pushing me for the kind of details I left behind with my Standard Grade history textbooks.

This weekend a further three Australians will be descending on my flat, and if previous invasions are anything to go by, I'll spend the weekend fielding similar questions, taking guesses at significant dates, and generally re-writing Scottish history in an attempt to save face.

Then there's their expectations of me when it comes to showing them around Edinburgh. "It's so great," they'll invariably say, "to have a local as our guide".

My heart sinks at this point. Knowing they will have devoured multiple guidebooks in anticipation of their visit, and most likely viewed Braveheart more recently than I have, I suspect they'd be better off showing me around my own city.

It's only when I'm under pressure to show foreign visitors a good time that I notice how little I've embraced what my home town has to offer.

I'm forced to admit that I've not visited the Castle since childhood, that the thought of lugging my carcass up Arthur's Seat makes me queasy and that, no, I've no idea where to find the best haggis in the city.

I try to conceal the fact that I tend to spend my weekends in the pub, in Harvey Nichols or in bed, that the last time I sampled a dram, I was 17 and trying to impress an unsuitable boy, that my patriotism extends to cheering on Susan Boyle in Britain's Got Talent. But the truth is I'm no different to most Scots.

We like the idea of the rest of the world buying in to the more romantic notions of Scottish life - indeed, we perpetrate them when entertaining foreign guests - but very few of us actually practise them in our day-to-day lives. Nevertheless, this weekend I'll be dutifully boiling a haggis, frying up black pudding for breakfast and serving up the single malt like it's the most normal thing in the world. And I might just have a quick brush-up on those Standard Grade history textbooks.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 23 January, 2011