My grandmother was perturbed that she had nothing plaid to wear to the Burns Day festivities.

"We'll have to rustle up something in the McC------- tartan before next year," I told her.

"Oh no, it's quite hideous," she replied.

"Yes, well, I'm afraid we've got a choice between co-opting someone else's tartan fraudulently, or wearing our own quite hideous tartan."

"Look," she said, laying down the matriarchal law, "I'm not going to get an awful tartan to wear once a year. If I get it, I want to use it all the time. You wouldn't shack up with a man because he seemed right on a special occasion; you'd have to actually *like* him. The same holds true here."

True story: the words "shack up" are her own elegant turn of phrase.