Library Closures in Fife – The Battle Commences

Posted on 10 August 2015 by Katrina

We went along to a meeting in the Salvation Army hall in Glenrothes last Tuesday, the meeting was about the intended closures of 16 libraries in Fife. I was quite amazed at the turn out, there were over 100 people there, much more than the organisers had hoped for. The very definitely ‘not bad’ author James Robertson spoke of what libraries mean to him. If you haven’t already read his books – you should.

There’s real anger amongst locals, especially when we realised that as usual the council has a completely different idea of the word ‘consultation’. In their dictionary it means ‘cut and dried’ or fait accompli if you want to be cosmopolitan about it. There’s always more than a hint of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy about these so-called consultations in my past experience. All of the community councils are closed over the summer and their next meetings are scheduled to take place after the ‘consultation’ period. Mobile libraries have been suggested as replacements for areas where libraries are to be closed. However they are also planning to get rid of one of the three mobile libraries which Fife own, so how the remaining two are supposed to cope with the extra work I have no idea.

I was vaguely aware of the words Cultural Trust being used in recent times but I didn’t really realise what it was. It seems to me that Fife Council have handed over the running of the libraries to this third party as a way of dodging the flak when cut backs are mooted. They can wash their hands of the whole thing and say – it’s nothing to do with us, it’s the Cultural Trust who say these places must be closed.

To add insult to injury it transpires that the paltry sum of £21 per head of population in Fife is all that is being spent on library funding at the moment. Considering the service given by the local libraries that’s what I call an absolute bargain already. How anyone can think of spending even less on what is an essential service is beyond me.

It seems that borrower numbers have been looked at and the powers that be have come to the conclusion that the libraries under threat of closure are not worth the cost of keeping open. In these days of austerity with huge unemployment in Fife, society can’t afford NOT to keep libraries open. It’s as if the people who have made the decision to close libraries have no idea themselves of the roles which a modern library fulfills.

Apart from the computers which are vital for people who can’t afford one of their own, there are also job clubs which meet in the libraries, a vital link for people desperately trying to find work. Those people may never borrow books so they don’t appear on any borrowing statistics but they need the libraries more than anyone.

Modern society can be a lonely place for a lot of people, the elderly in particular and the libraries are lifelines for people who might never speak to a living soul otherwise.

In another place and time I worked in a large county library, one of the many Andrew Carnegie libraries, a large Victorian building which had been designed to accommodate a large reading room. In the winter time I would say that half of the reading room users were people coming in to get out of the cold, and who would grudge them that? Not me anyway. I suspect the same is true now, especially among the unemployed and disabled.

The extra pressure which would be put on to the remaining libraries would be intolerable if any libraries were closed, the library in Glenrothes town centre is very small and the computers are always all occupied, there must be some sort of time limit to people’s use of them. There’ll be queues of people waiting to get on to a computer.

Many of the libraries under threat are in village locations, places which already have very little in the way of amenities. Women are often stuck there with no way of travelling elsewhere as public transport is dire/non existent or very expensive, especially if they are having to take children on buses to visit a library.

As it happens I’m reading George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier at the moment, written in 1934 he mentions using the libraries, and despite living conditions and life in general being dire for the ordinary working person, there was no mention of libaries being closed down. They obviously had more sense back then.

If you want to help with the campaign to keep the 16 threatened libraries open, please sign the petition.

Bees and Aberdour Railway Station, Fife

Posted on 3 August 2015 by Katrina

You’re not going to believe me – but see those two bumblebees on the plant in the photo above – they buzzed right past my nose heading straight for the plant pot which is located in Aberdour High Street, just at the railway station entrance.

Anyway, I was a bit alarmed by the size of the thing which buzzed me so close and so I had to have a closer look. It was actually TWO bees flying together, tum to tum, the upper one holding on to the lower one as it flew. Jack of course, being a bloke said they must be doing the dirty deed! Think again – said I, as that’s not how they do it!

I can only think that we saw a bumblebee self-rescue service in action as when they reached the plants in the tub they proceeded to do what bees normally do. Maybe one bee saw the other one in trouble on a pavement, and decided to do it a favour and take it to be re-vitalised. You quite often see them worn out crawling along with no energy to fly.

Am I being completely daft? Probably, but have you seen two bees flying tum to tum, holding on to each other?

The railway station at Aberdour is famous locally for having a great display of plants, especially in the summer, and a lot of work goes into it, to make it pretty for travellers passing through. You can have a look at photos of it here.

The Queensferry Bridge from Fife, Scotland

Posted on 5 April 2015 by Katrina

It’s all go at the construction site of the new Queensferry Crossing, which is what I believe the new bridge spanning the River Forth is being called. You can just see a bit of the garden of a house on the right hand side, they have a great view of it all.

The new bridge is reaching out over to Fife, they seem to be getting on with it quite quickly. In fact they’re way ahead of schedule and well under budget too – how often does that happen?!

I think it’s going to look quite elegant when it’s finished.

On one of our many recent night time journeys over what I suppose must now be called the old Forth Road Bridge, we took a detour down to the edge of the Forth so that I could take some photos by night.

It’s all well lit up as you can see, I think they’re working round the clock on it but there should be no danger of any vessels bumping into it. It’s quite a sight I think.

Kirkcaldy’s Tesco – closing down

Posted on 28 January 2015 by Katrina

It’s well known that the supermarket chain Tesco has been having a hard time of it recently, their profits have been cut to about £squillion, instead of their usual 0.5 £squillion. So it was no surprise that they intended to close some of their stores, however I was gobsmacked when it was announced on the Scottish news tonight that one of the stores closing is to be the Kirkcaldy one. As they were asking some customers how they felt about the news I was even more surprised to see my friend Christine’s husband on the TV saying how gutted he feels about it. I feel exactly the same, although we recently moved out of the town we still travelled to Kirkcaldy to do our grocery shopping. It’s the shop we are used to and we know the staff, and it’s also a reasonable size. I can’t stand bigger shops as I feel exhausted almost before I start – if I can’t see the end of the shop. I know it means loads of walking searching for what I want, and probably giving up on finding it altogether.

Apparently it is one of their ‘loss-making’ stores, I really can’t understand how that can be because it is the busiest supermarket which I’ve been in. It doesn’t matter when you go there are always a lot of shoppers in it. It’s the only supermarket in Kirkcaldy town centre, it’s close to the bus station so is handy for people who don’t have a car. Tesco closing means that if you don’t have a car you have to make your way to a supermarket on the edge of town, or half-way to Glenrothes, by bus.

What is more, the only Post Office remaining in Kirkcaldy town centre is located inside the Tesco store, so what is going to happen there. Are we going to be left with no Post Office in Kirkcaldy?!

The employment situation in Kirkcaldy has always been dire, in fact it’s dire in the whole of Fife and I really feel for the members of staff who are going to be made unemployed, it’s not going to be easy for them to find another job. Is there any point in starting a campaign to keep the Kirkcaldy store open? It looks like it’s a done deal, but I would like to see the evidence that the store is actually loss making, it seems hardly possible to me.

It’s just a blessing that Kirkcaldy’s famous Tesco cat popped off to cat heaven in the summer! How many supermarkets had a resident cat to greet you in the doorway? If you want to know more about him have a look at the short film below.

Kirkcaldy’s Promenade Opening Stroll

Posted on 7 January 2015 by Katrina

The promenade/esplanade at Kirkcaldy has been shut to the public for over a year whilst refurbishment was in progress and a few weeks ago they had a ‘promenade stroll’ to officially re-open it. The photo above is of the west end of the prom, where there is a gathering of strollers who were being led by a pipe band.

Various groups of people were taking part in the festivities, including kayakers, rowers and someone zipping around on a jet-ski. There had been reports that there would be a group of wild swimmers but that turned out not to be true which is just as well as they would have got hypothermia in no time flat. I did see one chap struggling to get into a wet suit but I never did see him reach the water! The wee baton twirlers weren’t there either, it was just too cold and wet for them I think.

As you can see, there’s now a smart new sea wall and hundreds of tons of rocks have been dumped on the beach beneath the wall in an effort to break the wild seas up and protect the wall. It’s a process which has been very successful in villages a bit further along the coastline.

And above is a photo of the small pipe band which proceeded from the west to the east of the promenade for the opening. The work was started when we were still living in Kirkcaldy and as the prom walk was one of our regular exercise routes we were sad not to be able to go along it for so long but Jack photographed the work in progress and you can see some of them here.

St Andrews Botanic Garden, Fife, Scotland

Posted on 22 July 2014 by Katrina

One gorgeous day last week we decided to take ourselves off to the lovely mediaeval university town of St Andrews, a favourite place of mine, you can see images of the town here, but first we stopped off at the St Andrews Botanic Garden. Jack had prepared a picnic lunch (he’s not a bad lad) and these two photos are of the view from our picnic bench. The pond was alive with life but luckily none of it was biting.

The bit of land below has been set aside as a wildflower meadow.

There’s also a herb garden and they sell a lot of unusual herbs at the Botanics shop, as well as some very fresh (just dug up) produce from the vegetable garden.

Below is a lily pond.

Below is part of a rockery, alpine garden.

More rockery/scree garden. I must admit that I’m tempted to create a mini rockery in my new garden. Remember they were all the rage in the 1960s? everything comes back around!

I would have to scale it down more than a wee bit, there’s no way I could cope with rocks the size of the ones above.

Last year I and a lot of other people signed a petition to try to keep these gardens open to the public as they were under threat of closure, due to cutbacks I think. You can read about it here. They’ve got a reprieve for the next five years anyway, but given the huge price of land around the town (due mainly to golf) I have no doubt that at some time in the future someone will try to grab it again for building purposes. If so, I’ll be lying down in front of a bulldozer!

I hope you enjoyed your armchair trip to the St Andrews Botanic Garden.

Swallows, Deer and Garden Update

Posted on 20 May 2014 by Katrina

I was showing my sister around our new place today and we were looking at the garden from the kitchen when we suddenly realised that there were birds swooping and circling all around the garden. The swallows have arrived, they definitely weren’t here yesterday. What is that saying? something like – one swallow does not a summer make. Well umpteen of them were swooping, in fact in Scots you could say that there was a wheen o’ them, meaning a lot. I suppose that means that it is really summer, but not going by today’s weather it wasn’t!

Unfortunately they move too fast to get a photo of them, but a few hours later I was upstairs, still trying to unpack books and find places for them, when I realised that a deer was walking very close to our garden fence, I rushed to get the camera and was lucky that it was in no hurry to move on. Then I spotted another one following the first one. We’re certainly more rural here than in our old place.

The one above was a bit of a contortionist so it looks really weird. But the photo below looks more normal, I’ve seen more deer than ever before this year, often just standing in fields or lying down in the sun by the edge of fields.

I was thrilled to bits to see them but I suppose I’ll eventually get blase about them.

And here are some garden update photos. I’ve been busy trimming the grass edges and I’ve used the excess turf to make an oval in the grass, roughly the shape and place that I want to put a rockery, eventually. That’s going to be a long term project. You can see that I’ve begun to put the bones of the garden in place, in the shape of small trees. It’s beginning to feel like a garden already.

The photo below is of the garden beyond the circle, we have decided to put some sort of structure on those concrete blocks, probably a summerhouse as that was what was there before, it’ll make a nice focal point. I suppose I should have taken my washing line down!

Beyond the fence is the land where the deer were walking.

I’ve just looked up that quote and it turns out it was Aristotle who said it.

Kirkcaldy Harbour

Posted on 23 February 2014 by Katrina

We’ve lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years now but this is the first time that we’ve taken a close look at the harbour, we’ve always visited the more picturesque Dysart harbour before. But the Kirkcaldy one has been in the local news recently because they’ve dredged it so that larger ships can use it again. In fact I saw a barge aiming for the harbour just the other day, typically though I didn’t have my camera with me. The barges are taking grain to the flour mill which is the massive white building which you can see. For years the grain was taken there by lorries but amazingly someone decided that it would be much more sensible to use the harbour for deliveries again. A great decision because I’m all for fewer lorries clogging up the roads and polluting the place.

In the photo above there’s quite a mixture of buildings. The white tower which is just in view at the top is part of the Art Deco design fire station, you can see photos of it here. The building in the middle is an 18th century one which was just a shell when we first moved here but thankfully someone took on the massive task of refurbishing it to its former glory and it’s now a family house again.

This inner harbour is home to wee boats, and the modern buildings which are on the edge of the harbour were built about ten years ago when all docklands and quays in the UK seemed to be getting ‘regenerated’.

Pony and Trap

Posted on 17 February 2014 by Katrina

We were having a Sunday afternoon walk around part of the parkland at Balbirnie. The house itself is now a rather posh hotel, but the grounds are owned by the local council and there’s a golf course there too of course, well it is Fife so there’s always a golf course nearby.

Walking down the hotel driveway I heard this pony and trap long before I saw it, it wasn’t the clip-clopping which I heard though it was jangling bells.

I think it must be something to do with the hotel, maybe they pick up some guests from the railway station, to give them a Victorian experience. Anyway it was a nice sight but it did remind me of that Jane Austen spin off comedy which I saw at the flicks fairly recently, Austenland. No surprises that the film wasn’t up for any BAFTA awards as it was just a bit of light silliness, but I was pleased to see that Cate Blanchett got a BAFTA for her work in Blue Jasmine which I think was the only other film which I saw last year.

Winter Park in Fife, Scotland

Posted on 17 January 2014 by Katrina

I thought I would take some photos of Beveridge Park in the winter, although it has been a very mild one so far so no spectacular snow or frozen fountains this time. The photo above is of the cottage which is just inside the main gate. I think the head park keeper used to live in it but nowdays it’s used for offices.

There is actually a thin layer of ice over the top of the pond in this one, but it must have been warmer at the other end of the pond as it was ice free. The ice was a surprise to me because it didn’t feel cold at all, there was no wind for once and it’s the wind which makes you feel the cold, it goes through your bones. The pond birds don’t seem to notice the weather though.

There was some kind of stand off between the swans and geese as you can see, we didn’t fancy getting involved in it so we detoured around them onto another path – I know, cowardly but those swans are big beasts.

The tree above is always the first one to flower,I still have no idea what it is, it’s too early for cherry obviously, maybe almond though.

As you can see there was still some frost on the grass. The trees have taken a bit of a bashing from the wind this winter and the park workers have been kept busy clearing up the broken branches, but they still look good, and I suppose it’s natural pruning which won’t do them any harm, might even encourage new growth.

The three cygnets from last year are turning to white now, they are about half way there and in the spring they’ll fly off elsewhere. I think two of them have already been moved to another pond or loch, they have disappeared anyway.

And as you can see that adult swan is still keeping a close eye on the geese. The park has quite a good population of birds, apart from the normal gulls and rooks there are also moorhens and various types of ducks and even a pare of herons. The oyster catchers and curlews are usually poking away at the grass, obviously finding something to eat but I don’t know what.

I hope you enjoyed a wee tour around a winter park in Fife.

Pining for the West

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Category Archives: Local interest