Free Sleepover Club Vampires by Fiona Cummings Page A

Frankie.
    “Don’t be daft!” she chided. “It’s the bagpipes!”
    You’ll never believe what happened next. It was awesome. First the piper came into the room playing his pipes, followed by Mrs Barber who was carrying – the haggis! Bizarre or what? Then it got even stranger when Uncle Bob started reciting “Ode to a Haggis” by some guy called Robbie Burns.
    “Do they normally talk to their food like that?” Fliss asked, looking bewildered.
    Actually we didn’t understand a word of the poem, but everyone else seemed to know it by heart. But the absolute best bit was at the end when Uncle Bob got out this silver dagger and stabbed the haggis so that the steam burst out of it and its smell filled the dining room. It didn’t smell too bad actually, but Frankie went quite green just thinking about what was in it. Now you know me, I usually try anything once, but I was with Frankie on this one. We just looked on politely as everyone else tucked in and washed it all down with ‘wee drams’ of whisky. (If you ask me, the whisky smelt worse than the haggis!)
    “Now I didn’ae want to confuse anyone,” Uncle Bob stood up, grinning. “This isn’ae January the twenty-fifth, so we’re not celebrating Burns Night again. I just thought no-one would object to sharing all the pageant of one of our greatest celebrations with our wee Sassenach friends.”
    A loud cheer went up.
    “But don’t you bairns fret,” he continued. “You’re not going to go hungry. Bring out the feast, Mrs Barber!”
    And what a feast it was! It was all authentic Scottish grub too. We had Scottish beef (well, Frankie didn’t obviously) and mashed ‘neeps and tatties’ (mashed turnips and potatoes to you and me). And for pudding there was ‘clootie dumpling’. I know it sounds weird but it was a fruity pudding. Gordon told us that it got its name from the ‘cloot’ or cloth it’s wrapped in whilst it’s cooking!
    After we’d finished eating, one of Uncle Bob’s cronies, Angus, stood up and recited another poem.
    “Crikey! Are they going to go on like this all night?” Rosie wondered.
    I know it sounds dead boring listening to poetry, but it wasn’t at all. At least Angus’s one was easier to understand. It was about this guy, Lochinvar, who ran off with someone else’s bride or something. It was a bit gushy but Fliss loved it.
    “Right everyone!” Uncle Bob announced at the end of the recitation. “Let the dancing commence!”
    Cheering, everyone made their way into the lounge where the band was warming up.
    Now, I don’t know if you remember my efforts at line dancing when we had our Fun Day at Mrs McAllister’s stables? Well, my attempts at Scottish country dancing were even worse than that! It was just so confusing! There were Scottish reels and jigs and dancing in squares. We ‘Stripped the Willow’, performed ‘A Highland Welcome’ and danced something called, believe it or not, ‘The Elephant Walk’! It was great fun and nobody bothered at all when we messed up. Poor Gordon though, I trod on his toes so many times he eventually announced that he was “retiring injured”.
    We danced for so long that I thought my legs were going to drop off.
    “This is more exhausting than a soccer match!” I gasped, collapsing into a chair.
    “You’re not kidding!” agreed Frankie, flopping next to me. “I’m completely wrecked.”
    “Hey girls, have you any idea what time it is?” Mum was being swung wildly around the dance floor by Uncle Bob. She was kind of pink in the cheeks, but she looked as though she was enjoying herself.
    “Yeah guys, it’s almost midnight!” Dad came over to us. “We’ve a long drive ahead of us tomorrow and I want to make an early start. I’ll be calling it a night myself soon.”
    I certainly was very tired.
    “Are Molly and Carli going to bed too?” I asked.
    “They’ve been in bed ages! ” Dad laughed.
    “Losers!” I grinned. “They just couldn’t stand the pace, could