"Ah say boy....Ah ain't no chicken! Ahs a rooster!"

Sometimes I forget where I am before I open my mouth. As a result the words come flying out my mouth like a bow on a fiddle playing a jig. Sometimes its only when I take a breath and see the glaekit look of confusion on the face before me that I realise that I might need to slow down a little. However slowing down what I say doesn't come easy to a man like me. I do try to remember where I am and adjust my the pattern of my speech but that usually only lasts as long as I don't get myself excited.

Anytime I get excited I become more Scottish not less. Anyone who knows me knows that I love my food. That means any time I am ordering food I have to catch myself, or just let the wife order.

I also get excited when I'm having a disagreement with the wife, not that I enjoy it you see, just that I am a passionate person. And when the passion is aroused words come flying like the chords on an accordion. Anytime we have an argument the wife has a great deal of trouble understanding what I am saying, and keeping her face straight.

I've phoned up for jobs excited because I've seen an advert with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate my skills and carefully held back any Scottish words that would normally come in to my vocabulary only to hear "Speak English, If you can't speak English why would I give you a job!" coming from the other end of the phone. It took all my levels of control that day not to reply in perfect Glaswegian "fuck you in a pear tree by the way" because I realised then that guys like that don't want me to speak English, that is what I was doing albeit with an accent, they want me to speak American, a totally different beast.

It's guys like that though that make me not want to apologise for who I am, I am Scottish and proud to be so, but if I want to work in business here I have to control my excitement. When I am speaking with a potential customer I have to remember not to fire off my words like a Scottish reel. I certainly don't want to have to resort to faking an American accent. The only time I've managed it I sounded like a cross between George W Bush and Foghorn Leghorn.