The Antipodean: Skye High: Under My Kilt

There was only one dragon in Loch Ness today. And I was wearing it on my bum.

It’s the age-old question about kilts: what do they wear underneath? Little did I know when I volunteered to try one on, my entire HAGGiS Adventures group would find out the answer!

In my case, the answer was my new Calvin Klein boxers with a Chinese dragon tattooed right across my bum. But I quickly realised how first-world my shame at public near-nudity was when I was told about the living conditions of the previous inhabitants of huts like this one.

The nice wooden floor of this hut near Loch Ness is a modern convention. It would actually have been thick mud, along with whatever the animals left behind. But I wouldn’t have noticed the odour if I’d lived back then, because I’d have been equally fragrant. When you only bathe once a year, everyone smells like crap pretty quickly. Literally!

I was even more thankful the floor wasn’t thick mud when I learned that the first part of putting on a kilt actually starts on the ground. The 10m long piece of material had already been expertly pleated for me by Ken, our hard-case leader whose thick Liverpudlian accent is easily confused for a Highlands one by the unsuspecting. I just had to sit down and lay back with my hands above my head. The giggling Spanish girls on the other side of the room had a great view of my crotch and quickly pulled out their iPhones.