THE last thing I heard before I bashed my head on the kitchen cupboard door and my world disappeared in a blaze of pain, bright stars and flashing lights, sounded like 'Caw Canny!'

I lay on the floor, my left cheek caressing the cool, 'natural stone' lino, trying not to scare the dog by moaning too loudly, wondering what on earth it meant.

My wife, for it was she who had uttered the two seemingly meaningless words, was crouched down beside me and, after a quick check had revealed the complete absence of any blood or other essential bodily material leaking out of my pain wracked body, declared: "I told you to watch your head."

Even as I broke through the pain barrier, rubbed my head furiously and wondered about secondary concussion and memory loss, I felt sufficiently aggrieved to tell her: "No you didn't!"

But then I had forgotten, probably as a result of the blow to my head, that my wife is entirely Scottish and, in times of stress or emergency, reverts to that odd and always colourful language that made Braveheart such a closed book to me.

In English, a language in which she is almost proficient, 'Caw Canny' means 'go carefully', or, in this particular case, 'Watch your head!'

But there is an entire lexicon of phrases she comes out with, including, 'That's a saw with another snout', 'Jaloose', 'Hard neck' and 'casting up'. And those are just the ones I can get a handle on to write down.

There are even more that seem to have no relation to any language I have ever heard, and that includes Klingon.

It's odd because we have been married for some 30 years and it wasn't as if I didn't have an inkling she was Scottish.

She has hair as red as it comes and while she was not brought up in a Highland croft with a pet haggis and stag at bay, she never made any secret of her antecedents — far from it.

It seems her ancestors were one of the principal reasons why Hadrian decided to build a big wall. I was brought up in South Wales, but all I picked up from the local language was a tendency to say 'Over by here' or 'Over by there' when asked where something is located. Hardly a brain-stretcher.

My wife can maintain a complete conversation in the picture-book language of St Andrew and would do so if she lived north of Berwick-on-Tweed.

Sadly in Heavitree, Exeter, the Caledonian dialect is all but extinct, if it ever really thrived, so she is restricted to the occasional outburst at home that leaves the children bemused, the dog frightened and me smiling in pretend agreement with whatever it was she uttered.

The weird thing is, of course, that she is very clever — cleverer than the rest of us put together.

I emphasise that because I have always assumed, obviously wrongly, that those who speak in the olden tongues are a bit 'glaykit' — not all there.

I suppose, coming as she does from a country that gave us television, steam kettles, Billy Bremner and the Bay City Rollers, it is hardly surprising she is bright — and she married me, which I think only goes to underline her intelligence.

Mind you, I married her, which makes me pretty bright too and only goes to show that language is no barrier to a long and loving partnership — although it won't save you from a sore head.