WHY FILIPINOS AND EVERYBODY LOVES SCOTLAND: Redheads and The Highlands!

I spent most of the late Seventies feeling travel sick in a coach full of noisy Filipinos. I remember my head bouncing on the coach seat's hard armrest. I remember the people-migraines induced by the quack quack quacking of the dozens of Filipina 'aunties' who circulated around the coach making 'chismis', that is, gossiping. They always employed their screechiest voices in order to pitch themselves above each other and the coach's engine. Every so often the English driver would shout, 'Shyuuuudup! I can't bloody hear myself think! I'm never bloody doing this again!', and they'd all titter politely and go quiet for a bit until they worked themselves up to the next crescendo and it all started again.

Maids and nurses rubbed shoulders with diplomats and beauty queens. As ever with Filipinos abroad, there were more women than men. We would tumble out of the coach at some scenic spot or other and out would come the vats of rice, garlicky fried chicken, noodles with smoked fish, crunchy pork crackling, chopped egg and lemon, roast pork with liver, vinegar and garlic sauce, and my favourite, macaroni salad with mayonnaise, chicken, tinned pineapple, pimento and sweetcorn. Well, I was nine.

After feasting, we rarely managed to walk anywhere. Anyone who made the few hundred yards to explore whatever monument we had come to visit was considered adventurous and a bit nosy.

Were those 'aunties', many of whom were single, others with their families far away in the Philippines, ever lonely? Did I imagine they were casting slightly envious looks at my mother who had her English husband and children with her instead of on the other side of the world?

Because we were one of the few families in the Philippine community I felt they wanted us to represent the ideal family. Often I would be singled out for how-daughters-should-behave type talks by women whose own daughters were back in Manila or Cebu or Davao. I remember being quite surly towards them, but they were always kind and sweet towards me.

I loathed being told how 'lucky' I was to have a family. I thought they were being sarcastic or stupid so I would spit something back like, 'What? I don't know what you mean!' then flounce off.

It was plain to see that our family was about as jolly as a stroll through an imploding thermonuclear reactor. That my dad was rude to my mother and cruel to us. But the Filipinas just smiled indulgently - and slightly enviously.

Now I know why. To them, any family was better than none. Some had lost their families in the war. Others had worked so hard all their lives they had never had the opportunity to meet a husband. The rest worked abroad, sometimes in places where they were treated badly, their whole lives, while their children grew up motherless back home.

Sometimes I imagine how my English friends would feel if forced to leave their children to work abroad for years at a stretch, perhaps in Saudi or somewhere else with an utterly alien culture.

Who knows? It might happen yet. And I know I could not cope half as well as those sweet and cheerful Filipina 'aunties' of mine.