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.
The Kirkcaldy War Memorials 2010.
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them.
Jack Vettriano is another ‘local lad’ and I don’t know of anyone who has no opinion of his art, people either seem to love his work or hate it. In fact I know of a couple of women who had been best friends for about 30 years (I’m not either of them) but they nearly came to blows when they were having a ‘chat’ about his art. Apparently The Singing Butler is the most popular print ever. Did I hear you say How common? Well it must say something for an awful lot of people but it doesn’t do anything for me.
The art world has more or less shunned Vettriano and there’s probably a lot of snobbishness involved in that but the Kirkcaldy Art Gallery and Museum always has a few things of his on diplay. I have to say that the prints in the shops are actually a lot better looking than the originals which can have quite blotchy areas of paint.
One of my brothers loves this one though so I did find myself buying it for him a few Christmases ago. It’s called The Billy Boys and I suppose that for people who hanker after the 1950s then they’re just the sort of thing that they want on their walls.
I know that they’re a bit of a nostalgic trip back in time for women who wore those big sticky out polka dot dresses in the 1950s too. The suspender belt things just make me shudder but men of a certain type obviously enjoy them, Jack Nicholson has an original – I always suspected he was a bit ‘dodgy’!
This one is called Bluebird at Bonneville and it’s the only one which I think is quite good and I think that that is because of the fashions portrayed in it. Everybody just looks so elegant and I thought that Vettriano must be improving so I was quite disappointed when I saw the original photo and realised that he had just copied it.
I find his images really soulless, they have a photographic quality which I don’t like in paintings. I feel the same about Hopper’s work too. So what about you, do you love his art work or hate it?
Some first year students from the University of St Andrews have been having some fun making a spoof video and declaring their love for Kate Middleton. If you want a bit of a laugh have a look!
It’s all filmed in St Andrews but I have to say that I’ve never seen the North Sea look as manky as it looks in this video! If you look closely you’ll be able to see the second-hand book shop which I should be banning myself from entering for the rest of the year.
This is a the view from the top of the West Lomond looking over to Loch Leven. Confusingly the Lomond hills aren’t anything to do with Loch Lomond which is in the west of Scotland where the scenery is altogether much more spectacular.
Friday was a lovely blue sky day so we decided to go on our first hill walk of the year and chose the West Lomond hill near the village of Falkland in Fife. Usually both of the Lomonds are incredibly busy, in fact the first time I walked up them there were hoards of people going up and down which was a strange experience for me. I prefer hill walking to be fairly solitary with just a few people visible in the distance. Here is the West Lomond, it’s just as well that you can’t here us peching and panting our way uphill!
I had my wish this time and on the whole walk we only saw four other people. The hills are full of ground nesting birds at this time of the year and the whole place was full of larks singing very high up in the sky.
If you veer off the track to the right you can see a large green mound which is called Maiden Castle. It’s the remains of an Iron Age settlement and although it’s really just a big mound of grass it’s nice to have a walk to the top of it and imagine what it must have been like all those years ago. The mounds in the next picture are where the entrance is supposed to have been.
Just to prove that we did actually make it to the top of West Lomond here is a photo of yours truly standing by the Ordnance Survey marker, the shades were as much about keeping the wind out of my eyes as the sun.
So that was the good part of the day. The bad part was being stuck in Edinburgh airport waiting to pick my brother up and his flight being delayed for over four hours. Now I remember why I don’t like travelling!
I used to work in an Information and Statistics department in the National Health Service,so I’m well aware that things are often very different from what they would first appear.
Which would explain why the Scottish Government is claiming that the influenza rates are much lower than they were at this time last year. The young people in my own family have been hit badly by the flu this year, from my sister’s grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to my own sons who were ill at Christmas and they are in their 20s. As none of the older folks have succumbed we’re presuming that it is the swine flu.
Duncan got it really badly and by Hogmanay most of his friends had it too. They crawled out of their beds to celebrate the New Year at ‘the bells’ but they didn’t have any energy and Duncan ended up coming home not long afterwards, clutching a bit of coal to bring us good luck for the coming year.
Due to the fact that it all happened over the Christmas period nobody has been to see a doctor, so they won’t appear in any statistics. It can take two weeks to get an appointment anyway, unless they think that you might die, so people tend just to stay at home and cosset themselves until they feel better.
So unless Fife has been more badly hit than the rest of Scotland I think we can take the statistics with a pinch of salt.
I’m also annoyed by the weather statistics because the weather people keep telling us that it should be about 2 or 3 Celsius here but my garden is telling me something very different. It’s still frozen solid and it has been like that since November. It was -12 C in Dunfermline during the day not long ago but according to the weather report it wasn’t anything like that cold.
Apparently it was the coldest December in Scotland since records began 100 years ago. I definitely believe that statistic!
I realised that the schools were going to be shut again yesterday (Monday) when I had to make a freezing foray to the loo at 6 o’clock in the morning, and discovered that it was snowing heavily again. We had had very little snow during the whole weekend and hoped that the worst was over, but no such luck. So the schools in Fife were closed for a week and a day. They opened today though which is just as well, it’s all very well having to be closed for a wee while but there are exams coming up and a teaching schedule to work through.
Last night we made our last trip through to Dundee with yet more stuff from Duncan’s room, it’s amazing how much there was. I wasn’t looking forward to the journey, remembering the last time. But D. was back living with us because he didn’t have his computer and needed help with putting his new tv together. He’s sorted out now thankfully.
The roads to Dundee were still ridiculous and we haven’t seen a gritter yet this year. The councils ran out of salt and grit last year because of the very cold and long winter and it looks like they are determined not to run out of them again, in fact they’re just not using the stuff.
The worst of this new snow has fallen on the central region and there have been hundreds of people stranded on the main motorway through Scotland. People have been stuck in their cars for over 24 hours in some places. The problem seems to have started with articulated lorries which jack-knifed in the ice, blocking the roads. I think they’re planning to get the army out there to give a helping hand, I certainly hope so anyway.
We managed to get a wee bit of a walk around this park today and for some reason it was almost deserted. What has happened to all the kids?
Maybe they’ve been busy playing in the park all week as the schools were closed and they’re fed up with it all now, but there wasn’t any evidence of them, no snowmen at all. Had they all been dragged to the shops by parents keen to get Christmas shopping done?
As you can see, the pond has frozen over and there were footprints in the snow which is on top of the ice but it really isn’t safe to walk on it as I’m sure it isn’t thick enough.
The weather forecast is predicting another very cold week ahead for us so it might be as bad as last year was. You can see here a photograph of the park which was taken during the Christmas holidays last year.
This is the refurbished fountain which had to be taken apart during the so called summer because somebody forgot to turn the water off last year and the resulting ice must have damaged it. It doesn’t look nearly so nice now and I suppose it’ll take a few years for it to weather nicely.
Strangely there doesn’t seem to be nearly so much snow in the park as there is in the streets and gardens.
According to the news report tonight it’s colder here than it is in Iceland and Scandinavia, we seem to have got all their snow, but it doesn’t feel too bad when you’re out walking in it. By the time we trudged through the snow from the town today we actually felt too hot, we were laden with more household necessities for Duncan’s new place.
There hasn’t been much snow today and we’re hoping that we’ll be able to drive through to Dundee tomorrow with more stuff and maybe order ‘white goods’ – the most boring things, to my mind anyway.
However, the temperature here is set to plummet to -6 degrees Celsius which I believe is 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit. So the roads are just going to ice up completely and it might be too dodgy to venture out in the car.
The schools are still closed and I’m sure they won’t be open tomorrow, they’ve only ever been closed for two days in a row before but we have had it a lot colder, in the past we’ve suffered -18 degrees Celsius and the fact that there isn’t much wind at the moment is good but on the other hand I suppose that’s why we’ve got this weather front stuck over us and going nowhere.
I’m glad that we aren’t any further north though because it’s going to be -27 degrees Celsius tonight, which is -16.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m sure a lot of people have to cope with weather a lot worse than this but we just aren’t used to snow which stays around for a while. When I was a wee girl we didn’t have snow for years and years, which I was quite happy about because on the rare occasion when it did snow – it turned to slush in about half an hour.
This is the fourth bad winter that we’ve had in a row so it looks like we’re going to have to get used to it in the future.
We just had to bite the bullet yesterday and despite the horrendous weather we hired a van and made our way to the flat pack furniture shop beloved by many that is Ikea. The journey there was pretty hairy because so much snow had fallen. Duncan has taken the week off work and as luck would have it all of the schools in Fife are closed so my husband was able to drive the van. The worst nasty moment was when we crashed into a roundabout and ended up spinning around and pointing in the wrong direction but we managed to get out of that situation and carried on to Edinburgh.
Our plans for a leisurely look around the store and having a late lunch there before buying everything required were shot to bits when they announced that the store was closing in one hour not long after we got there. So it was a mad dash roung gathering up beds and bookcases and such before being chucked out and having to brave the roads again.
It was a slow journey back to Kirkcaldy with the snow coming at us, on and off. Then when we got back home we just threw some food down our necks, loaded some more stuff into the van and set off for Dundee and Duncan’s new flat.
I hate roundabouts. We skated around them and at times it was really terrifying as the van didn’t really like any change in direction, it’s just lucky that there was hardly anybody else on the roads. The snow was even worse when we got to Dundee and the van got stuck in the entrance road to Duncan’s place so we just had to unload all the stuff and trudge through the snow which was about a foot deep. Then up to the second floor flat – no fun at all.
My husband said we’re getting too old for such shenanigans, and I think he might be right. We had to dig ourselves out in the end, with the help of some very good neighbours and a dog.
The journey back to Kirkcaldy was very scary especially when a blizzard hit us and we couldn’t even see the road at times. I dreaded seeing the lights of up-coming roundabouts in the distance. But we made it, and returned the hired van unscathed.
During that marathon journey in three different counties we only saw one snow plough and it had the plough bit raised so it wasn’t doing anything. We saw no gritters at all.
We had to travel across the scary Forth Road Bridge twice yesterday, but today it has been closed for the first time since it was opened in 1962 – which just shows you how bad the weather has been. It’s quite depressing really as we have a long way to go till the end of the winter. It used to be very rare for us to get snow before Christmas but winter seems to come earlier each year now – and stays with us longer, and summer is non-existent.
This is a photo of a very disgruntled bird which appeared in my garden after our first fall of snow. I think it’s a snipe, but I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a bird like this here before, it’s definitely some sort of wading bird and the poor thing seemed to think that the snow was sand because it kept poking its enormous bill into it and was very disappointed to find nothing it could eat.
