St Andrews, Fife, Scotland

30 November 2011 23:53

This is what the sea at St Andrews looked like when we were there on Saturday, I took this photo around about 3.30 and an hour later it was completely dark. That’s what I hate about winter. I’m so looking forward to the winter solstice! Considering it was such a wild day the sea looked amazingly calm as it rolled in.

St Andrews Seascape

This is what is left of St Andrews Cathedral. It’s quite difficult to take digital photos in a gale as you and the camera tend to get blown about. The cathedral stands above the sea and has been battered by the wind for about 1000 years. After the reformation it fell into disuse so the locals would have taken as much of the stone as they could for building purposes as usual. Well, you can’t blame them for recycling.
St Andrews Cathedral
And this is St Andrews Castle, I have to admit that I took this one earlier in the year when the sky was blue. There are some great photos of the castle here, if you’re interested in seeing some more of it.

St Andrews Castle

In no time at all it was a dark and stormy night – but that’s for another blogpost!

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Categories: Architecture, Coast, Scenery, Scottish History, Towns

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Scottish Business Sense

29 November 2011 23:32

We had intended going to Edinburgh on Saturday to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia but the weather has been terrible for about a week now with howling gales and I didn’t fancy going over the road bridge. It was closed to high sided vehicles which means that our wee car would be buffeted about on the bridge – scary!

So eventually we ended up in St Andrews, just to get out of the house really. I have a horrible feeling that we’ll be battening down the hatches soon when the ice and snow get here so we might as well go out while we still can.

This window sign amused me. Surely only in Scotland would a barber try to get your custom by offering you free whisky. Mind you, I think it’s a brilliant idea because not only will they probably get more customers – they’ll also be less likely to complain if they don’t like the haircut – because of course they’ll be ‘half-cut’ or semi drunk!

Whisky Enticement

The long things in the window are golf clubs – well it is St Andrews!

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Categories: Towns

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Manna from Hades by Carola Dunn

28 November 2011 13:33

Manna From Hades is the first book by Carola Dunn which I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. Although it was first published in 2009, the book is set in Cornwall of the late 1960s or 70s, as the author spent a lot of her time there when she was growing up. She has definitely captured that atmosphere.

Eleanor Trewynn has spent a lot of her life living abroad as she and her husband spent their working lives helping those less fortunate in far flung countries. Now that she is retired and she is a widow she is living in a small Cornish village, having just had enough money to buy a small house, the ground floor of which she has turned into a charity shop, while upstairs she has her home.

Whilst gathering donations for the shop Eleanor discovers a small case full of jewellery amongst the clothing but has no idea who donated it, and so begins a mystery! I’m not going to say any more about the storyline as I don’t want to spoil it for people!

This is an entertaining sort of easy reading book which harks back to the time when female detectives were a rare thing and women weren’t allowed to wear trousers to work. Something which I’m sure people can hardly believe nowadays but until the equality of the sexes laws came about in the mid 1970s that is what life was like for women.

It says on the front cover A Cornish Mystery and that was one of the reasons I chose this book because if a book is set in Cornwall then it’s a plus for me. I just realised recently that the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton is set in Cornwall and I loved those books so they probably kick started my love for Cornwall, long before I ever managed to visit the place – and I wasn’t disappointed when I eventually got there.

Anyway, I’m keen to read more of Carola Dunn’s books, even if they don’t have a Cornish setting. Although Dunn was born and raised in England she now lives in the US – Oregon I believe.

My thanks to Jo at The Book Jotter who encouraged me to start reading Dunn’s books, although Jo hasn’t read this one yet.

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Selected Stories by Anton Chekov

25 November 2011 23:42

I bought this wee paperback book from a local second-hand bookshop which has sadly closed down now – such is the way of the world. I used to love browsing in it and almost always found at least one treasure to take home.

Anton Chekov had quite a short life, being only 44 when he died and he had no idea that people would still be reading his work over 100 years after his death. He thought his work would be read for only seven years after his death, how wrong he was! Obviously he’s better known for his plays but this book of his early short stories is well worth reading. It’s sad to think that he was already ill with the tuberculosis which eventually killed him when he was writing them.

The stories are:

The Confession
He Understood
At Sea – A Sailor’s Story
A Nincompoop
Surgery
Ninochka – A Love Story
A Cure for Drinking
The Jailer Jailed
The Dance Pianist
The Milksop
Marriage in Ten or Fifteen Years
In Spring
Agafya
The Kiss
The Father
In Exile
Three Years
The House with the Mansard
Peasants
The Darling

Some of the stories are very short indeed, just four pages or so whilst the one called Three Years is very long, I would call it a novella really as it’s ninety pages long.

Anton Chekov wrote about the lives of the peasants of Russia, the grim reality, which didn’t always go down well with those in authority but I’m glad that he gave us this peek into the lives of ordinary Russians, although it can be a bit grim, but life was grim for all ordinary people in the 1880s which is when these stories were written.

Once again, I have to say that it’s thanks to The Classics Circuit that I read this book. Until its Russian literature tour I had only read modern Russian literature, and not much of that either.

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Stamford,Lincolnshire,England

25 November 2011 00:15

One of the places which I definitely wanted to visit on our recent road trip south was Stamford. For some reason I thought that it was where the BBC filmed Cranford but I was wrong, it was Middlemarch which was filmed in Stamford. It’s about 100 miles north of London but somehow seems much further away.

It’s a lovely place actually, not very big shop-wise but it has a lot of independent shops and it’s all very quaint. I wanted to take a photo of these buildings near the town centre because the wee white one in the middle was leaning every way it possibly could – backwards, forwards and from side to side – all at the same time!

Old buildings in Stamford,Lincolnshire

There were some quite grand looking buildings in the town but somehow I’m always drawn to the wee quaint ones which ordinary people will have lived in for centuries. We tried to get into this antiques shop, the lights were on, but nobody was at home!

An antique shop in Stamford

I don’t think a town is a proper town unless it has a river running through it and this one is very scenic.

The River Welland, Stamford

Swans and all! Although I have to admit that this is as close as I like to get to swans. They might look very elegant but in my experience the males are very bad tempered. There’s a particularly nasty one at Linlithgow Loch which just lives to hiss at you.
River Welland, Stamford

During all our visits down south we had no problems with parking, we usually managed to park legally and for free and very close to the town centres. At Stamford we were about a three minute walk from the town. It’s such a change for us because all of the towns in Scotland have seem to have pay and display car parks or parking meters. The local councils just don’t understand that it really puts people off visiting their towns if they have to worry about the expense of parking tickets and feeding meters then it doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. No wonder our high streets are dying on their feet!

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Categories: BBC, Books, Towns

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Bertie Plays the Blues by Alexander McCall Smith

24 November 2011 00:06

In this book poor wee Bertie makes a break for freedom by putting himself up for adoption on eBay and when that doesn’t work he tries to get to Glasgow to find an adoption agency. Bertie has always wanted to live in Glasgow, unknown to him his father, Stuart has the very same ambition. Poor Bertie has another psychologist and Irene, Bertie’s horrendous mother, is busy psychoanalysing the analyst. Of course it’s Irene who is most in need of being analysed.

Matthew and Elspeth have become shell-shocked parents of triplets, entirely naturally and they aren’t coping too well with it all. This actually isn’t too far fetched because I do know a couple who had one wee boy and when he was about a year old they decided to have another baby which turned out to be triplets, the upshot being that they had four boys under the age of two. Nightmare! I must admit that I’m beginning to get a wee bit fed up with this gormless pair of millionaires though.

Stuart has joined the Freemasons, much against Irene’s wishes and McCall Smith sings the praises of that secret organisation which apparently is mainly for raising money for charity!!

It so happens that I side completely with Irene on the subject of Freemasons (whodathunkit) which is just corruption dressed up as is every secret society. In fact I can get quite a bee in my bonnet about the whole thing because a big part of the reason why the world is in the state that it is is because people get jobs by their ‘connections’ rather than on merit. It leads to people being in top positions who are completely clueless about what they’re meant to be doing. Like all those so-called bankers who messed up everything and didn’t have any banking qualifications at all. Honestly where is the point in people going to university to get qualifications if some idiot can come along with a dodgy handshake and shoot to the top? It’s corruption – plain and simple.

Right – I got that off my chest. Otherwise I enjoyed the book and I’m glad that I’ve caught up with the series. I have hopes for Bertie getting a life of his own – when he’s about 40.

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John Steinbeck – Voice of America

23 November 2011 12:14

I don’t know about you, but I often miss TV programmes which I would definitely have watched, if only I had looked at the TV schedules. So at 10.30 last night I realised that I had missed a BBC documentary about John Steinbeck and luckily I had time to watch it on the iPlayer this morning because if I don’t view it quickly then I won’t get around to it at all. Voice of America with Melvyn Bragg will be fascinating to anyone interested in John Steinbeck’s work or American history.

I looked it up on You Tube TV and according to that, there are ways of watching it if you can’t view it through the iPlayer. It’s well worth giving it a go anyway!

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Categories: BBC, Books

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Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.

22 November 2011 23:11

When one of our friends in Cambridge suggested that we should visit Ely we thought we might as well do it. I hadn’t realised that we were so close to Ely, for some reason I seem to recall that the place was regarded as the back end of beyond when I lived in the south of England. I really don’t know why because it’s close to Cambridge, I was going to say and civilisation, but really it’s fairly civilised itself!

Driving into the town we saw signs to Oliver Cromwell‘s house. I don’t know if I ever knew that he had lived in Ely – if so I obviously blocked it out as it was a surprise to me. He lived there for ten years. Cromwell is on my mental list of despicable characters from history so I didn’t bother to actually go into his home which is a very short walk from the town.

Oliver Cromwell's House

I think that this wee house is much nicer though and it’s very close to Cromwell’s. I think the windows are nicer and I’m fairly sure that it can’t have been lived in by anyone as horrible as Cromwell so it’ll have a better atmosphere! It strikes me that it would be really easy to transform all of these old houses into cross stitches. I might do something like that in the future.

Quaint old house

The cathedral is undergoing building work at the moment, which ancient building isn’t, I ask myself?

Ely Cathedral

All in all I really liked Ely, it doesn’t feel as well off and salubrious as Saffron Walden but it’s a friendly place with nice buildings and shops and a wee bit of a market.

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Categories: Architecture, Towns

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The Importance of Being Seven by Alexander McCall Smith

20 November 2011 23:45

As you would expect from the title of the book it’s the six year old character Bertie who is concentrated on in this one. The poor wee soul is still very much under the thumb of his mother, the dreadful Irene, although Stuart, Bertie’s father, is pushed around by Irene even more than Bertie is. You just long for Stuart to ‘man up’. Thankfully they get a wee respite from her overbearing bossiness in this book, bliss for both of them!

At one point some of the Scotland Street residents jet off to Italy, including Angus Lordie and his dog Cyril. Some time ago I was asked which fictional dog was my favourite and I couldn’t think of any dogs at all except Nana in Peter Pan, but now I think that Cyril would be my choice as best fictional dog. He’s a great character and what with his ability to wink and being in possession of a gold tooth, he’s what I would call a gallus dog. I’m sure he must have been born in Glasgow, rather than Edinburgh!

As you would expect from this series of books, it’s a quick and enjoyable read, possibly knowing Edinburgh is an advantage. McCall Smith enjoys educating non Scots in Scots words and early on in the book he comes up with: bidey-in, trauchle and various others – and I’m all for spreading the words.

Mind you, I’m beginning to think that he gets a discount at Valvona and Crolla which is a delicatessen/restaurant in Edinburgh. He certainly should get something because he never misses a chance to give them a name check!

In the past I’ve read one of McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie books which was okay-ish but I wouldn’t rush to read another one, but when I was at the library I saw one of the Corduroy Mansion books. Has anybody read any of these ones, if so, what do you think of them?

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That’s Fife by Grant Stott

18 November 2011 23:59

In case you don’t know who Grant Stott is – he’s a DJ on the local radio station, Radio Forth which is based in Edinburgh. I found him singing his version of Sinatra’s That’s Life on You Tube. I think it’s quite funny and you can get a wee glimpse of some places in, and people from Fife too.

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Categories: Local interest, Music

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