St Andrews in Focus Issue 50 Jan Feb 2012

St Andrews in focus • shopping • eating • events • town/gown • people and more

Issue 50, £2.00 January / February 2012

www.standrewsinfocus.com

the award winning magazine for St Andrews

St Andrews in focus • shopping • eating • events • town/gown • people and more

From the Editor A sharp-eyed friend pointed out two typos in the last issue.

Dear Reader, it may be a subconscious desire of mine to prove I’m not infallible! Or, like some Eastern carpet weaver, it could be a sign that I do not wish to presume upon the perfection of Creation. I also have a funny feeling that computers are sneaky and maliciously change my spelling after the event...

In spite of everything, it seems to me a miracle that this is the 50th issue of the magazine; surely something to celebrate! My very special thanks, as always, to you my readers, advertisers, and most particularly Duncan Stewart of Print and Design, Winter & Simpson the Printers, also Elspeth Paterson who heroically distributes the magazine to some 6800 addresses. Here’s to the next 50 issues, and I’m still optimistic that the magazine will one day become a thriving town business providing employment for townspeople, for the greater good of St Andrews!

Flora Selwyn

******** The views expressed elsewhere in this magazine are not necessarily those of the Editor.

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2012 EDITOR Flora Selwyn Tel: 01334 472375 Email: editor@standrewsinfocus.com DESIGNER University of St Andrews Print & Design (printanddesign@st-andrews.ac.uk) PRINTER Winter & Simpson (ken@trendellsimpson.co.uk) DISTRIBUTER Elspeth’s of Guardbridge PUBLISHER (address for correspondence) Local Publishing (Fife) Ltd., PO Box 29210, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9YZ. Tel: 01334 472375 Email: editor@standrewsinfocus.com SUBSCRIPTIONS St Andrews in Focus is published 6 times a year.

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Contents FEATURES • Zero – A fuss about Nothing • The St Andrews Community Trust • The Jigger Inn Revisited • Winter in St Andrews • Reviews: – Open to New Light – The Best of 2011 – The Best Soldier – Weapons of Mass Destruction • Language lesson • Anonymous Burns • Debut Novel • Ask the Curator

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SHOPS & SERVICES • Franchising • Crowdfunding • Little Italy Restaurant • The stick just got sharper • Roving Reporter

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ORGANISATIONS • The Western Front Association • Got Green Fingers?

• Vive l’Alliance!

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TOWN & GOWN • A Distinguished Career • Introducing the Sabbaticals • A Passion for Russia • Toonspot • An Unsung Hero • Daughters of Dolma • Fife Futures Forum

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EVENTS • Selected Events

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OUT AND ABOUT • Of coos & calves, bulls & bullocks • Nature Notes • Air Miles, flying South • Visiting Cambo Estate

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NEXT ISSUE – Mar/Apr 2012 COPY DEADLINE: STRICTLY 28 JANUARY

All contributions welcome. The Editor reserves the right to publish copy according to available space.

Cover – Chinese New Year by Rhona Rutherford

FEATURES Edmund Robertson, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, marking this 50th issue

Zero – a fuss about nothing?

Have you ever thought, “I wonder who invented zero?” I am often For everyday use, neither the ancient Greeks nor Romans asked that question, but I have no satisfactory answer. If someone used a positional number system so they had no need for a 0 had come up with the concept of zero which was immediately seen place indicator. In Roman numerals 50 is L, while 5 is V, each as a brilliant innovation to be used from that time on, the question has its own notation. However, Greek astronomers used the would have a satisfactory answer, even if we didn’t know who Babylonian positional system and began to use the symbol 0. invented it. The historical record, however, There are many theories why this particular shows quite a different path towards the notation was used. The best is that concept. Zero makes shadowy appearances counting was often done with counters only to vanish again almost as if people on a sand board and when a counter was were searching for it yet did not recognise removed to leave an empty column it left a its fundamental significance even when they depression in the sand which looked like 0. started to use it.

Ptolemy, writing around AD130, used the The first thing to say about zero is that Babylonian system together with the empty there are two uses of zero which are both place holder 0. He used the symbol both extremely important, but are somewhat between digits and at the end of a number, different. One use is as an empty-place and one might be tempted to believe that indicator in our place-value number system. at last zero as an empty-place holder had Hence in a number like 50, the zero is firmly arrived. This, however, is far from used so that the position of the 5 is correct. what happened and over 1000 years later it Clearly 5 means something quite different. would still not be in common use.

The second use of zero is as a number itself In India by AD650 zero was being used – we write it as 0. The only certainty is that as both an empty-place indicator and as the name ‘zero’ came from the Arabic ‘sifr’, a number. However, zero didn’t behave which gives us the word ‘cipher’, through the like other numbers (try dividing by zero) so Latin ‘zephirum’. most people discarded the “number zero” Perhaps the strange history arises idea. The Hindu-Arabic number system because zero is far from an intuitive we use today was introduced into Europe concept. Numbers are abstract ideas. around AD1200 but met fierce resistance Fifty houses, fifty people, fifty copies of – people wanted to continue to use Roman St Andrews in Focus are concrete notions, numerals. By the 1600s zero began to Have you ever thought, but 50 is an abstract property which these come into widespread use, but was still three examples all possess. However, in “I wonder who invented zero?” encountering much resistance. Of course early historical times numbers were only in the 21st century there are still problems used to solve real-life problems. If ancient caused by zero. When people celebrated peoples worked out lengths of sides of a the new millennium on 1 January 2000 they rectangular field of a given area then the answer wouldn’t be 0. were wrong, since only 1999 years has passed. This is because One might think that once a place-value number system came the calendar was set up without a year zero. Although one might into existence then some empty-place indicator is a necessary idea, forgive the original error, it is a little surprising that most people yet the Babylonians had a place-value number system without this seemed unable to understand why the third millennium, and feature for over 1000 years. Moreover there is no evidence that the 21st century, began on 1 January 2001. Zero is still causing the Babylonians felt that there was any problem with the resulting problems! ambiguity. Remarkably, original Babylonian texts survive from around 1700 BC since they were written on tablets of unbaked clay, using cuneiform writing. Their notation for numbers was different Professor Robertson continues from ours (not based on 10 but on 60) but, translating into our notation, they would not distinguish between 2012 and 212 (the context would have to show which was intended). It was not until around 400 BC that the Babylonians put two wedge symbols into What is special about the number 50? Well, those interested the place where we would put zero to distinguish 212 and 2’’12. in number curiosities will know that it is the smallest number The two wedges were not the only symbol used, however, and that can be written as the sum of squares in two different a tablet, thought to date from around 700 BC, uses three hooks to ways: denote an empty place while another uses a single hook. There is a common feature, however, for the empty-position mark never 50 = 5x5 + 5x5 = 1x1 + 7x7. occurred at the end of the digits, but always between two digits. So although we find 2’’12 we never find 5’’. One has to assume that the The next number in this sequence is: belief that the context was sufficient to indicate which was intended 65 = 1x1 + 8x8 = 4x4 + 7x7 still applied.

If this reference to context appears silly then it is worth noting followed by: that we still use context to interpret numbers today. If I take a bus to 85 = 6x6 + 7x7 = 9x9 + 2x2.

Dundee and ask what the fare is then I know that the answer, “It’s four fifty” means four pounds fifty pence. Yet if the same answer Can anyone work out the next in the sequence? is given for the cost of a flight from Edinburgh to New York then I know that four hundred and fifty pounds is intended.

We can see from this that the early use of zero to denote an empty place is not really the use of zero as a number, merely the use of some type of punctuation mark so that the number was correctly interpreted.

50th Issue?

[Ans. 145 = 8x8 + 9x9 = 1x1 + 12x12]

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FEATURES Henry Paul – Community Councillor and chair of St Andrews Community Trust

The St Andrews Community Trust The St Andrews Community Trust is nearly one year old: in its first year it has made 12 grants to local causes.

The Community Trust was established through an agreement between the Community Council of St Andrews and St Andrews Links Trust. The purpose of the Trust is to distribute funds generated through the protection and trademark of the Town Crest of the Royal Burgh of St Andrews. The Trustees are Henry Paul (Chair) and Judith Harding of the St Andrews Community Council; Robin Waterston, Fife Councillor in the St Andrews Ward; Kate Ferguson, representing the St Andrews Links Trust.

There are also three local resident trustee positions filled by Arthur Griffiths, Donna Renton, and Jo Roger.

The Trust considers donations to projects in the Operating Area, namely the area of the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council, and those contiguous community council areas surrounding St Andrews. Applications for grants should be made in writing, email, or via the website, clearly stating how much funding is required, any match funding applied for, and how your project will benefit the people of St Andrews, also which of the Trust’s Objects your application covers.

This year, the Trust made the following grants: £7500 to the St Andrews Festival towards the cost of providing a marquee for the events over the weekend of 2527 November 2011; £5000 to STANDEN (St Andrews Energy Network) towards helping people in fuel poverty; £3000 to the

Strathkinness Community Garden project, to fence in the site and establish a school garden for Strathkinness Primary School; St Andrews Guides received £2600 to replace their perimeter fence; Homestart received £2500 to train new volunteers; £1500 went to the Duke of Edinburgh Award group at Madras College to purchase expedition camping equipment; £1000 went to the 8th Fife Scout Group; £1000 was given to the project to document a year in the life of Madras College by local photographer Peter Adamson, subsidising the final cost of the book in order to make it generally affordable; £1000 was given to Enable, volunteers who organise a group in Holy Trinity Church Hall for over16s with learning difficulties; £1000 were given to the St Andrews Cathedral Virtual Restoration project in which academics from the Computing Department of the University

are constructing a simulation using the popular Sim software; £500 went to Madras College Senior Girls Hockey Team for new kit; Dazzle received £500 for their next production at the Byre.

Details of grants already awarded, together with an online application form can be found on our website: www.standrewscommunitytrust.co.uk .

Forms may also be obtained by writing to: The Secretary, St Andrews Community Trust, c/o Murray,Donald,Drummond & Cook LLP, Kinburn Castle, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9DR. The next meeting of the Trust will be in February. Applications for financial consideration should be in the hands of the Secretary by 24 January. Any received after this date will be held over until the second Trust meeting of 2012.

Homestart volunteers on an outing to Kellie Castle (Photo courtesy the CC)

Jimmy Macmillan in Blairgowrie got in touch with the magazine. He told your editor that he had read the article in Issue 48 featuring the Jigger Inn. Mrs Sheila Macpherson, daughter of the last Station Master to occupy the building, is now 87 and living in Couper Angus; she kindly wrote the piece below, and contributed the photograph.

The Jigger Inn (Old Course Hotel)

(Photo courtesy Sheila Macpherson)

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“I lived here from 1936-39. The photo shows the front of the house in 1936. The rear was a goods yard, with mainly coal wagons for local coal merchants. The front windows looked out on the 17th Green. The house was found to be damp because the foundations were below sea level. I loved living there, one perk being able to follow big contests free gratis and for nothing! My father, Mr A Mackay, was the Station Master from 1936-41,42. As far as I can remember the house consisted of 3 upstairs bedrooms, on the ground floor a kitchen, bathroom, living room, drawing room as in the days of yore, and a single bedroom.”

Jimmy adds that Sheila is in poor health, but indomitable in spirit. She is, in his words, “fiercely independent,” taking all her setbacks in her stride. Jimmy is himself now 90 years old. He and Sheila have been close friends since their schooldays in Madras. When young, Sheila loved horses, and would go often to the smiddy in Bridge Street (now the Shell petrol station) to watch the horses being shod. She went riding on horses in Nick Campbell’s riding school. And she enjoyed walks from her house, past Martyrs Monument on the Scores all the way to the harbour. Today she looks after her garden birds and is delighted to have enticed a woodpecker to feed from her bird table.

Thank you Jimmy most sincerely for bringing this story full circle!

FEATURES Donald Macgregor muses on

Winter in St Andrews “The ‘Long Storm’ commenced on 12 of January 1823, and continued without intermission until the 24th – slowly but surely enveloping the country beneath a white shroud of snow. After a week’s cessation it again set in with renewed and increased severity on Saturday night,1 February…

The roads were completely blocked up, the snow having drifted higher than the hedges and dykes – in some instances the drifts being from fifteen to twenty feet deep.There were no railways then: the stage-coaches from Dundee, Cupar, St Andrews, and other towns, to Edinburgh were all stopped, and great numbers of people were employed on the different highways cutting through the snow…

“The old City had a most fantastic appearance. The houses were covered with snow – most of the windows partially obscured by the drift sticking on the outside – in many cases totally blinded…So deep was the snow in several parts of the City that some tunnels had to be dug, or scraped out – like rabbits burrowing in the sand.”

George Bruce thus describes one of the fiercest winters recorded in St Andrews. The description comes from Chapter X of Bruce’s magnificent Reminiscences of St Andrews Bay (1883) and extends to over three pages before the author returns to his main themes of recounting the many wrecks in the bay, as well as castigating the Town Council and other authorities. He also mentions other bad winters, those of 1827, 1838, and 1881.

Other writers of the late 19th and early 20th century refer to winter in St Andrews in contrasting ways. The ‘student poet’ R F Murray in “A December Day” (from The Scarlet Gown, 1891) experienced early winter as almost summer-like: Blue, blue is the sky today, Warmly the light Sleeps on St Andrews Bay – Blue, fringed with white.

That’s no December sky!

Surely ‘tis June Holds now her state on high, Queen of the noon.

W A Craigie, in College Echoes (Vol/Vi, October 1894), invokes winter as some sort of giant: Winter dread, Wrapt in snow and tempest drear!

Through the midnight still and dead.

Girt with wailing and with fear, Towers resound beneath his tread.

Yet a crown White he lays upon their head, And at morn the scarlet gown Brightens with a glow of red This our loved and wintry town.

That is probably enough literary references, and readers can form their own view of the literary merits of these and any other mentions of winter they may find. In the post-Second World War period, the winter of 1946-7 also resulted in St Andrews, or perhaps it was the outside world, being cut off, and in the last two years the newspapers’ correspondence columns have had numerous letters complaining, often unfairly, about the effects of snow on our transport systems.

Bookmakers and others take a keen interest in the probability of snow on Christmas Day, which seems generally to be thought of as a good thing – especially if you have bet on it – whereas being immured in your own house and having to be dug out by “a number of gleesome young fisher lads”, as happened to old Sandy Philp, his sister Tibbie and her black and grey cat near the Ladyhead, North Street, in 1823, (see Issue 25, Nov/Dec 2007) is not regarded as desirable, though such a thing would add excitement to the festive season.

The likelihood is, according to climatologists, that weather will become even less predictable as the century proceeds, with a good chance of the climate becoming wetter and warmer, which of course does not rule out extremes in the other direction.

Let us hope that if snow does descend on St Andrews this winter it will be welcomed as part of the pattern of the seasons and that if our neighbours get into difficulties we will be on the alert to help them.

Note: George Bruce (1825-1904), was, as many will know, a businessman and town councillor who along with his architect son George was responsible for planning, funding, and creating the Embankment that bears his name. In Helen Cook’s St Andrews Through Time (Amberley Publishing, 2011) there is more information about this great St Andrean.

(Photo by Flora Selwyn)

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FEATURES: REVIEWS Leslie Stevenson, Lecturer, then Reader in Logic & Metaphysics at the University of St Andrews 1968-2000, [author of Twelve Theories of Human Nature, OUP New York, 6th edition 2012 (1st ed. 1975); The Many Faces of Science, Westview Press, 2nd ed. 2000; Inspirations from Kant, OUP New York, 2011] previews his

Open To New Light:

Quaker spirituality in historical and philosophical context Published by Imprint Academic, January 2012, price £17.95 This book is about “the meaning of life” or “the spiritual quest”. I offer a critical evaluation of some main strands of Western religious and philosophical thought over two millennia, with some recommendations of the approach I have found in the Quakers. But I am not setting out to convert my readers to Quakerism, though I think that is one good community in which to pursue the spiritual quest. Nobody can approach these topics with a blank mind, but that does not mean one has to come with a closed mind, a mind already firmly made up and unwilling to listen to anything that does not fit in with one’s preconceptions. I hope to demonstrate an openness of mind to new light (a favourite Quaker phrase), and perhaps to offer some refreshed insights into eternal questions and venerable traditions.

Knowledge of how the various traditions have developed over many centuries can

help us understand the options now on the market. I start with Socrates’ philosophy of life, and I survey the amazing development of philosophy that he initiated in ancient preChristian Greece. I offer my own take on the teaching of Jesus, and on the tangled history of Christianity in the two millennia since his time. I also take a look at the history of Judaism and Islam, since these religions share roots with Christianity and have interacted with it in important ways.

In the early modern period, I devote a chapter to George Fox and the beginnings of the Quaker movement, and I go on to discuss its relation to the thought of the Enlightenment in Locke and Kant. I suggest that there are some surprising parallels between the undogmatic spirituality of the Quakers and the heavyweight philosophy of religion of Immanuel Kant.

In the penultimate chapter I recommend a non-literal interpretation of language about God, with some help from the 20th century Anglican, Austin Farrer, on “poetic truth”. And in the last chapter I controversially extend this approach to the concept of resurrection, making use of some of the famous 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s striking remarks on the topic.

I am writing for the intelligent general reader who would like an approach to these large issues that is accessible, but not dumbed down; reliably knowledgeable, but not overburdened with detail; critical, but not (I hope) dogmatically prejudiced.

Ian Macdonald, President – St Andrews Photographic Society

The Best of 2011

Available from J & G Innes, or from the Blurb website: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2665364 Price, hardback, £25.20; softback, £20.20 The Best of 2011 is a collection of photographic images by members of St Andrews Photographic Society. In previous volumes, we have had images sourced only from Fife, but this, our fourth book, has a varied range of images. Nineteen members have submitted images through the seasons from across the world as well as Scotland. It makes an ideal gift, as the subject matter is wide ranging!

(Photos courtesy the Photographic Society)

‘Lost in Transit’ by John McNairn

‘Nightfall on the pier’ by Colin Nicol

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‘Winter Pavillion’ by Nicola Shepherd

FEATURES: REVIEWS Lt Colonel (Retd) W J Blythe, Regimental Secretary, The Royal Scots, reviews

The Best Soldier

by Elizabeth Scott

Published by Buchan-Hepburn, Edinburgh, 2011, paperback, price £12.99. Available at J & G Innes, and all good bookshops, also from The Royal Scots website, www.theroyalscots.co.uk (price £12), and on Kindle.

Profits shared with The Royal Scots As a former soldier and a proud Royal Scot, it has always puzzled me that Sir John Hepburn, the Founder of my Regiment, has not figured larger in the pantheon of Scottish military heroes. After all, who else can claim the title of “The best soldier in Christendom and therefore the World”, as he was described at the time, or deserves more interest than the man of whom it was written that Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, “could do naught without him”.

Dr Scott has done us great service, by researching Sir John’s life and presenting it in readable and exciting form. Hepburn started in poverty and obscurity in a small farm in East Lothian and ended in glory in the Cathedral of Toul, where his body lay under the baton of Marshal of France in a magnificent mausoleum erected by the French King.

Inevitably, a soldier’s life in the 30 Years’ War was a tale of march and counter-march, of skirmishes and sieges, and of battles great and small, but even in such repetition Dr Scott has identified what made Sir John great. First, the management of his men: he cared for them, he trained them to the highest pitch, and he avoided unnecessary losses.

It is recorded that in the retreat after the first

campaign in Lorraine, where the Royal Scots provided the rearguard, Hepburn lost nine men to the thousand casualties suffered by the pursuing Spanish General Galas.

Second, there was his tactical acuity.

Learning from the Dutch, he drew up his soldiers in relatively extended mixed units of pikes and muskets, with the former giving protection during reloading and the formations being less vulnerable to cannon fire than the conventional massed squares of the time. His relief of the fortress of Mewe demonstrated imagination, while his immediate response at Breitenfeld, taken at his own initiative when he saw the left of the line collapse, was inspired and saved the day for Gustavus.

These skills remind us of another great Scots soldier, Sir John Moore, who pioneered methods of training and deploying soldiers as highly manoeuvrable light infantry and, like Hepburn, died at a moment of triumph with Royal Scots in his ranks at Corruna.

Sir John also understood audacity and surprise. Dr Scott’s account of his raid, with his men dressed as monks, on the city of Trier to capture the renegade Canon Metternich was in the style of the Special Air Service three hundred years later. Sir David Stirling would have been proud of it.

Dr Scott’s book brings Sir John to life. She has had his correspondence in old German, which was held in The Royal Scots archive at Edinburgh Castle, translated and revealed to us for the first time. On a visit to his place of burial at Toul, she found documentation which described in detail his magnificent funerary monument, alas destroyed in the French Revolution. Her researches in the National Archives and the Privy Council records have thrown up new material, which causes The Royal Scots to review its own regimental history, and corrects in many respects the only previous history of Sir John, written by James Grant in 1851. Her book is meant for young and old, for those interested in military history, for those who simply enjoy a good yarn! And for a Royal Scot, it is a source of overwhelming pride in our origins, Hepburn’s Regiment, the First Regiment of Foot, now part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland who still stand at the Right of the Line thanks to Sir John’s Royal Scots.

Sandy Cameron reviews

Weapons of Mass Destruction – The Zimbabwe Connection

by Harry Naismith

Published by Spiderwize, ISBN: 978 1 908128 29 4 Available through online bookstores, including Amazon, and from high street stores, price £7.99 I am not a fan of gung-ho action drama.

Mostly I cannot stomach the stilted, vacuous, ‘Blue Peter’ narrative and dialogue. So when I picked up this book and read the first couple of chapters, I was very pleasantly surprised. If action drama is your genre of choice, and even if it is not, then you are in for a real treat. The language is literate, the dialogue is crisp, and the narrative fairly hums along from the first page onwards. I would never have guessed that it was a debut novel for the accomplished way it draws the reader into the story, a story that deals with one of the enduring mysteries of the 21st century – the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.

What makes this book really special for me is its ring of authenticity.

Ostensibly it is a work of fiction, but it is clear from the way in which it vividly conveys the nightmare of Iraq, that the author has more than a passing acquaintance with operations in that theatre of conflict.

The principal characters are a group of ‘Wild Geese’ (how many of you remember that film?), mercenaries drawn to civilian security work in the days after the fall of Saddam Hussein. These particular ‘dogs of war’ have been recruited by a British firm to secure the power lines to

Baghdad. The leader of the hired guns is a battle-scarred veteran of the Rhodesian “bush” war, one David Bradley. He has been investigating the human trafficking of young girls in southern Africa (who said the slave-trade is dead?) when he gets the call from London. Prior to accepting the mission in Iraq, Bradley had stumbled on a mysterious Zimbabwean government operation. Events in Iraq cause him to put two-and-two together and come up with a really sensational hypothesis.

To say anything more would be to give too much away of what is an eminently plausible plot.

Harry Naismith has written a rattling good yarn, all the more remarkable for being a first novel. It is a powerful account – testosterone-charged, expletive-splattered, gun-oiled prose reminiscent of the excellent Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn. And like Matterhorn, the reader experiences the visceral horror of the unfolding events – terror, violence, degradation, brutality, and the ever-present spectre of sudden death.

This is an absorbing tale and a fascinating insider’s chronicle of the ghastly events that unfolded in what we regard as the cradle of civilisation. It is mainly, however, a well-written adventure story that sparkles with wit, wisdom, and entertainment.

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FEATURES In case you missed this insight from the Internet:

Language Lesson A Spanish teacher explained to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are either masculine or feminine. ‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’ ‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’

A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

that oup decided The men’s gr finitely be de ld ou sh r’ ‘compute ’), because: computadora Feminine (‘la t their creator 1. No-one bu logic; their internal nd understa s use to ey th ge ua ng e la mputers is 2. The nativ co r he ot with communicate ne else; yo er sible to ev incomprehen s are ke ta is m st le smal for 3. Even the -term memory stored in long ; and al ev tri re r te possible la you make a 4. As soon as one, you find en commitm t to half your pay ng di yourself spen it. cessories for cheque on ac

The women’s group, howev er, concluded that ‘computer’ sh ould be Masculine (‘e l computador’) , because: 1. In order to do anything w ith them, you have to tu rn them on; 2. They have a lot of data, but still can’t think for themselves; 3. They are supposed to he lp you solve problem s, but half the time they ARE the 4. As soon as problem; and you commit to one, you realize that if you had waite d a little longer, you co uld have got a better model.

Dr Christopher MacLachlan, School of English, muses on an

Anonymous Burns?

The recent film Anonymous has event on which the poem is based happened in Burns’ lifetime. We revived the theory that the plays of hardly need Burns’ brother Gilbert to tell us that he recalled the incident, William Shakespeare were written by and remembered Robert stepping aside to think about it and the poem somebody else. The idea has a long he would write. history. It depends on three facts about The poem itself has the immediacy and vividness of the moment, Shakespeare: that his plays are so good as the poet addresses the mouse herself and sympathises with her it is hard to believe only one man could plight, while recognising how it might resemble his own: ‘The best laid have written them all; that what we know schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,/ Gang aft agley’. The detail of the poem, about the man called William Shakespeare does not include much if with its references to farming terms, such as a ‘daimen-icker’, and the anything about writing plays; and that what we know about William Scottish winter, with its ‘cranreuch cauld’, also tells us this is a poem Shakespeare is in any case so little that much of his biography is a from life. ‘To a Mouse’ rapidly became the source of many illustrations matter of guesswork and speculation. of Burns standing in a field at the plough, watching a mouse scurrying This leaves plenty of room for those who doubt that an obscure away along a furrow. Some of these images are rather fanciful, showing individual from Warwickshire could have produced the greatest dramas Burns in what looks more like his Sunday best than the working clothes in English literature. There is a bit of snobbery in this, of course, as he would surely have worn, but the spirit of the pictures is the same. the list of alternative authors suggests. They are usually noblemen Here, they say, is the poet making poetry from his own experience. of some sort, on the grounds that the wit and knowledge shown in Much of Burns’ verse is like this. Even his masterpiece ‘Tam o’ Shakespeare’s plays could not be the product of a Stratford childhood Shanter’, though a tale of wonder and imagination, is rooted in his own and education.

Ayrshire, its customs and superstitions. Burns, too, must have attended But there’s another reason for doubting Shakespeare’s authorship, market days in Ayr, and no doubt he took a dram or two before his and that is part of the nature of the genre he is most famous for. A homeward journey, upon which he may well have embarked somewhat playwright puts his words into the mouths of his characters and, unless late in the day. And who knows what he thought he saw in the dark and he puts himself on the stage, does not speak for stormy night as he rode home? himself. He uses his own thoughts and experiences, ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us,’ wrote Unlike Shakespeare, but in masquerade. We might try to guess at the Burns in ‘To a Louse’, ‘To see oursels as others Burns clearly and man (or woman) behind the actors’ masks, but see us!’ It’s a vain hope, as we can never get we can never be sure. That’s another reason for repeatedly uses his own out from behind our own eyes to see from the suspicion that the man behind the plays is not another perspective. The best we can do is try life as his subject-matter to imagine what it must be like to see the world Shakespeare, but somebody with more knowledge than he is supposed to have had. from somebody else’s point of view. What Burns Could we imagine the same happening to Scotland’s National achieved helps us to do that. The honesty and intimacy of his selfBard? Obviously not, and nobody has seriously doubted that Robert expression through his poems gives us an insight into the life and mind Burns wrote the poems printed over his name. Unlike Shakespeare’s of another human being that we can compare with our own. That is the life, that of Burns is well-known and well-documented (see Robert great achievement of Burns’ writing out of his own life. He was not the Crawford’s book The Bard). We know a lot about him and about the first, perhaps, to write poetry about himself. Milton had written about his writing of his poems and, though the quality of his work is very, very blindness and Pope about being bombarded by requests from lesser high, it cannot be denied to him because he was not a rich man richly poets for help with their verses. Burns, however, is arguably the first educated. In fact, part of his fame is that despite the relative poverty of British poet to make himself the main topic of much of his poetry and his background and learning he was able to create works of genius that the story of his life the chief way to understand what he wrote. He led are still read and admired over two centuries after his death. the way for the poets who followed him, the confessional Romantic There is another reason for our confidence in Burns’ authorship, poets like Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron, and Victorian poets like and that is in the nature of so many of his poems. Unlike Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Christina Rossetti, and later Thomas Hardy.

Burns clearly and repeatedly uses his own life as his subject-matter.

By the twentieth century poetry had become, like Burns’, about the Take one of his best and best-known poems, ‘To a Mouse, On turning poet’s life and reflections, and much of it still is. The life and work of her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November, 1785’. The title itself Burns changed poetry so that it would never be anonymous again. tells us this is a poem by a farmer, and the date assures us that the

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FEATURES Harry Naismith, describes the background to his

Debut Novel (see Reviews)

Just imagine you’re an odious tyrant – not being in 1980. I then opted for fresh challenges unlike the late Iraqi dictator – in possession of in Harare’s commercial sector, and a few years paraphernalia deemed by “civilised” nations to later started my own security business. be a threat to world peace and the incriminating However, as the 1990s drew to a close evidence is about to be discovered on the Zimbabwe government’s economic policy your home turf by United Nations weapons was starting to seriously unravel: costs of basic inspectors? What better place to stash the foodstuffs spiralled, commuter fares doubled kit than in a pariah state such as Zimbabwe? and re-doubled resulting in evermore strident Conditions there are ideal given the Zimbabwe demands for wage increases. The anxiety and authorities’ seeming total disregard for the rule frustration of the workforce was palpable – of law backed by the country’s equivalent of unless the powers-that-be took drastic action the Gestapo, salivating like a pack of ravenous violent change to the status quo seemed hyenas eager to crunch any meddlesome inevitable. journalists, or other brave hearts intent on I decided to return to Scotland with my revealing the regime’s darkest secrets. family to start scanning the job-market for I know Zimbabwe well, having lived and suitable employment. Most of the betterworked there for the best part of thirty-five paid jobs in my line were off-shore. My first years. In the mid-1960s I assignments were in joined the BSAP, the police Afghanistan and Nigeria, I know Zimbabwe well, force of the country known followed a few years later then as Rhodesia; my having lived and worked by a contract with a British period of service included firm involved in there for the best part of security the “bush” war which raged the restoration of power throughout the 1970s. facilities in Iraq. Our thirty-five years As history portrays, primary objective was to that conflict was eventually brought to an end recruit and train a local guard force for the at the Lancaster House conference, following protection of the electricity power lines between which the new nation of Zimbabwe came into Basrah and Baghdad, because the “Ali Baba”

– armed criminal gangs – were felling pylons, stealing copper cabling from the downed lines then selling the proceeds at scrap-metal markets in neighbouring Iran. Of course, this nocturnal industry was extremely lucrative for those involved, including several local Sheiks who were not in the least bit happy to have us disrupting their profitable sideline. In fact some tribal leaders did all within their power to make our task as awkward as possible.

But soon we had grimmer opposition to contend with than just local bandits and recalcitrant Sheiks, for a wave of bloody insurgency rapidly engulfed the areas where our teams were operating. Incidents – ambushes and improvised explosive devices – began to take their toll; serious casualties mounted within our ranks.

The risk was no longer worth the money; it was time to stop playing cowboys and go home to pen my first novel: Weapons of Mass Destruction – The Zimbabwe Connection.

Jennifer Reid, Curator of the Preservation Trust Museum

Has the Answers

Q. What was the Sea Box Society?

A. The Sea Box Society was founded in the early seventeenth century and operated until it was formally disbanded in 1921. It was known by a variety of names; “The Seafaring Society in the Parishes of St Andrews and St Leonard’s”; “The Sea Poor Box of St Andrews”; “The Poor Sea Box Society of St Andrews”. It was founded in around 1643 by seamen of St Andrews for the “pious and benevolent purpose of relieving such of their number as… may happen to be visited with sickness and the infirmities of old age, and making a provision for the support of the widows and orphan children of deceased members”. Initially, there were four classes of seamen that could be members – Masters, Mates, Mariners, and Apprentice Masters; latterly there were only the first three. Admission fees to the society were based on members’ rank, and annual fees were paid based on their wage. As the years progressed so did the management and constitution of the Society. Amendments in regulations changed and minute books were introduced by 1857, allowing us now to see a fuller picture of the goings-on of the Society. The final Annual General Meeting of the Society was held on 11 January 1921. The minutes of this AGM are only 4 ½ lines long, and record the end of the St Andrews Sea Box Society. The papers of the St Andrews Sea Box Society remain today – they are in the possession of the St Andrews Preservation Trust and are held at The University of St Andrews Special Collections. These papers are a unique record of life in St Andrews over 300 years.

Q. I have occasionally read about Bee Boles and Charter Boles – What were these?

A. The Scottish word “bole” means “recess in a wall”, and that’s exactly what bee boles and charter boles are.

Bee boles, are, as you might expect, used for keeping bees. A bee bole is an alcove in a wall into which a free-standing structure, known as a “skep” would be placed.

Skeps were usually made of straw and resembled Bee bole behind No 5 South Street an upside-down pudding (Photos courtesy the basin. The skep would Preservation Trust Museum) then be put onto a piece of wood into the recess in the wall. The bee bole would act as protection to keep the wind and rain away from the skep, protecting in turn the bees living inside.

There was a great demand for wax in St Andrews because of the candles burning at the Cathedral, and records show that honey was often used to pay rent. Therefore, there are many more bee boles to be found in St Andrews, and the rest of Fife, than there are to be found elsewhere in Scotland. The climate in St Andrews is also very favourable for keeping bees. Remains of bee boles can be found in mainly south-facing walls in South Street, Market Street, and even in the Abbey Wall.

Charter boles are smaller then bee boles; they are small cubical recesses of about eight inches in size carved into western boundary walls. They are used to indicate the ownership of a wall, and who, therefore, is responsible for its upkeep and repair. These can also been seen around St Andrews, the earliest, probably, the ones on the path from 42 South Street through South Court to Greenside Place.

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SHOPS & SERVICES

at Elspeth’s of St Andrews

9 Church Street, St Andrews Tel: 01334 472494

10

SHOPS & SERVICES David Adie advises. This Article is intended to give only very general advice and is no substitute for taking full and proper advice, taking into account your own circumstances.

Franchising

Franchise businesses are becoming more and more common. It is known to sell a franchise for say, £20,000 amazing how many high street and non-high-street businesses are – £25,000, get it up and running and quite actually run as franchises. Franchising is traditionally associated with happily sit back while it fails, then re-sell the fast food restaurants, and in particular, burger restaurants. In actual fact, same franchise in the same locality to another franchising covers things such as key cutting, cleaning services, estate party, and so churn round. agency, carpet cleaning, and even I am told, dog walking.

Before taking on a franchise you really Like many things, franchising emerged in America and is seen by need to do your homework to make sure it is many as a very convenient way to get into the business world. The the business for you, that you will not mind advantages are that you start with a name which is well known, and you being so restricted you have to wear the polo do not need to spend a fortune on advertising to make that name further shirt or the tee shirt with the company logo all of the time, and paint the known in the locality. There is a ready-made package, tried and tested, premises in the required purple and gold livery. which can be adopted by the new business without having to re-invent Some franchises involve the franchisor having to buy or lease the the wheel. Franchise businesses generally have a better chance of premises and in other cases the franchisor will buy or lease the premises, success than a business starting from scratch. The franchisee is usually then lease or sub-lease to the franchisee. This is, of course, a further taking advantage of a proven formula, where element of control. Franchisors can also be everything has been thought out and someone very good at providing things like stationery, My advice is, if you are going for else has made the mistakes historically, so that signage, etc (for which the franchisee has to a franchise, do your research, the franchisee taking on the franchise will not pay with an appropriate mark-up) and they do repeat these. make hidden profits through these things. speak to the appropriate The main disadvantages are that some My advice is, if you are going for a professional bodies and get legal franchise, do your research, speak to the franchises can be very costly. In particular, some fast food franchises can be extremely appropriate professional bodies and get legal and accountancy advice. expensive to buy into and really involve the and accountancy advice. franchisee staking everything on the success A well-drawn Franchise Agreement should of the business. Amazingly, not all of the most common franchise be one which is sufficiently restrictive to hold a franchise together tightly, businesses are always successful. Nothing is guaranteed. The franchisee but not so restrictive that it will stifle any individuality or any incentive. takes all the risks. The franchisee may also find that the business and the Tread carefully, do not assume that any franchise is a guaranteed route to format is slightly restricted because it allows no room for initiative. The success. Also, assess carefully whether or not the initial fee is worth it and quality of the franchise can also vary depending on who runs it, because what you are getting for it. Has a previous franchisee in the area failed? some franchisors are extremely proactive, continually re-invent things Do you get the back-up for example, or are you simply paying the fee for and think of new ideas passed down the chain (this may be helpful, but very little ongoing back-up and control? You do not wish a franchisor who can sometimes be disruptive). Some even require franchisees to attend will simply take the fees and give nothing back. regular “training courses” at the franchisees’ own expense. Others, on the As always, take full advice on your own situation, and do not rely other hand, are happy to rest on their laurels and do very little other than solely on this Article. collect franchise fees. Some more unscrupulous franchisors have been

FOR OUT OF TOWN LEGAL ADVICE Wills / Inheritance Tax Planning / Executries / Powers of Attorney / Guardianship Conveyancing / Commercial Property / Business Law

We can consult locally

ADIE HUNTER Solicitors and Notaries 15 Newton Terrace Glasgow Telephone: 0141 248 3828 Fax: 0141 221 2384 email: enquiries@adiehunter.co.uk

St Andrews & District Community Safety Panel For more information about your local panel please contact PC Paul Buttercase, Community Safety Officer Tel. 01334 418745 EMail paul.buttercase@fife.pnn.police.uk

11

SHOPS & SERVICES Michelle Rodger, Chief Communications Officer (CCO) Bloom VC, introduces the concept of

Crowdfunding

funding; tens, 100s or 1,000s of people So you’ve got a great idea for a business but donate £10, £15, £50, £100 or more to you need some money to get you started. ventures in return for treats, gifts, even a What do you do? Ask the bank? simple, public ‘thank you’.

In a tough economic climate accessing Companies like Kickstarter and funds to start and grow a business is IndieGoGo, both in America, have raised increasingly difficult. And even without the millions of dollars for start-up businesses, current economic climate, someone with and there has been a number of successful no previous business experience is unlikely high profile examples; you might remember to come out of that conversation with a that Barack Obama crowdfunded his chequebook, a loan, and an overdraft facility. election campaign, and a group of young The bank of mum and dad is usually open for entrepreneurs in America raised just shy of business, but what if you need a couple of $1m to prototype and manufacture the TikTok thousand pounds, rather than just a couple of watch strap, designed for the hundred? iPod Nano. You can now find There is another option – this product in Apple stores Crowdfunding. worldwide.

Crowdfunding is an source of the future is Closer to home, Scottish funding. It’s a global phenomenon crowdfunding Opera successfully crowdfunded that has changed the way start-ups, a production raising four student enterprises, social and times what they needed. community projects raise money.

Back in 2006 they launched It’s simply tapping into the online a Sponsor-A-Character campaign as an crowd – your network of friends and family, experiment where contributors were offered and their network and beyond – to ask for the chance to sponsor individual characters donations of cash in return for rewards. for donations ranging from £25 to £5,000. For Crowdfunding has developed rapidly over these donations, people were given credits the past few years, driven by the maturing in the programme next to their sponsored social media ecosystem, including Facebook characters and were invited to an on-stage (500 million active users), Twitter (more than party to meet the cast. Scottish Opera needed 175 million active users) and LinkedIn (more £10,00, but ended up raising £44,000. than 100 million registered users spanning As inspirational as massive success more than 200 countries and territories stories like this can be, crowdfunding works worldwide). just as well – and often better – for smaller It is remarkably simple, but incredibly ventures, for ordinary people with a good effective, it is micro patronage, or grassroots idea.

Scotland’s own crowdfunding platform, Bloom VC (the VC stands for Venture Catalyst), was launched in November 2011.

Under the Bloom model individuals or startups create an online elevator pitch for their idea, detailing what it is, why it’s important, how much money is needed and for what. Using video and images to create a compelling story and offering exciting and attractive treats in return for donations, the pitch is then uploaded onto the Bloom site where the project idea owners share it with their social networks, both online using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and offline amongst friends, family, neighbours, and Amanda Boyle (Photo courtesy Bloom VC) colleagues.

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Each project has up to 60 days in which to raise the funds. If they fail, they don’t receive a penny, but if they succeed or even raise more than requested they get the whole lot.

The promises of money are not charitable donations, nor are they investments or loans.

The project owner or entrepreneur is not expected to give up equity in their fledgling business, nor pay anything back, instead they maintain complete control over their work or business.

It might seem a radical approach to supporting entrepreneurship, but Bloom founder and CEO Amanda Boyle believes the time is right. “Crowdfunding is not only a worldwide phenomenon, it is the latest evolution in the way new businesses and young entrepreneurs raise their start-up funds,” she said. “In the 1980s there was VC funding, the 90s saw the rise of seed capital as a source of funding, then came angel funding – but the future is crowdfunding.”

She added, “Bloom is right at the heart of this evolution.”

The advent of social media has made almost anything achievable. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said, “People have an ability to share something… and have people hear it in a way that just wasn’t possible 20 years ago”.

So why not take advantage of it?

Do you have an idea for a business that will change the world, but have no money to do it? Do you want to help your son or daughter change the world? Do you know someone whose grandson could be the next Richard Branson? Heard of an idea you think will make a cracking business? Or just want to help support the next generation of entrepreneurs?

Visit www.bloomvc.com and join the crowdfunding revolution.

SHOPS & SERVICES Hugo D’Bere, your Grizzly Gourmet, reviews

Little Italy, St Andrews covered with red checked table cloths. The I had occasion to have a hyper business lighting outside is even red, green, and white. lunch with another local St Andrews bear, so The food was good. Lunch was a very decided to go to Little Italy, which I had never reasonable £6.95 for two courses; a dessert tried before. It is a very small restaurant at was available on a three-course 2 Logies Lane, and certainly tries lunch at a slightly higher price. I hard to be Italian. The interior décor had the house salad, which was has dark wood floors, dark wood The food not just the usual lettuce one panelling, with red walls and a red and green ceiling. The lighting seems was good sometimes gets, but had a fair smattering of other vegetables, to be mainly green, red, and white. including olives. The main course The walls are covered by every was a pasta, which was an ample conceivable type of Italian poster and portion. My companion had minestrone soup, photograph, including the obligatory black which was a good traditional thick Italian and white photograph of Marlon Brando as dish, and a Margherita pizza, which was... the Godfather. In the evening the tables are

well, a Margherita pizza! Extra toppings were available at additional cost.

The staff are friendly; being small premises there is a nice buzz about the place. I would recommend it for all types of occasion, including a visit with the cubs.

When passing by, the place seems to be busy. I would award it 8½ out of 10.

It is so much better than the sort of chain restaurant Italian, of which there are many, including some in St Andrews. It is a pity in some ways that it is not bigger, but perhaps it would then lose something of its cosy feel.

By the way, the wine list was good and quite reasonable. The coffee was excellent, as you usually find with Italian restaurants.

Do pay a visit.

(Photos by Flora Selwyn)

The New Picture House Winner of the RAAM Independent Cinema of the Year Award for Excellence Enjoy a pre-show drink in our lounge or book an exclusive function or children’s party with a private screening

www.nphcinema.co.uk

117 North Street, St Andrews Tel: 013334 474902

13

SHOPS & SERVICES Jonnie Adamson

The stick just got sharper In these days of austerity and shaky public finances it will hardly come as a surprise that the regime for the collection and administration of taxes is becoming stricter and more punishing for those who abuse the system and ignore their responsibilities. For a number of years there has been a system of self assessment where it is the responsibility of the taxpayer to tell HMRC how much tax they are due and when they are due to pay. HMRC will help you calculate this figure if you supply them with the information early enough, but recent highprofile mistakes and ongoing problems with HMRC’s computer systems have not helped endear them to the nation. One rather comical instance occurred in July this year when HMRC ran out of paper when printing off tax demands and some taxpayers faced weeks of waiting before finally receiving them (perhaps not a bad thing if cash was tight!).

Continuing with the government’s usual euphemistic style, the ‘modernisation’ of the late penalty and payment laws will reach an

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important date at the end of January. This is the first time when a late tax return will face a £100 penalty, no matter what the tax due. Up until now if you had no tax to pay or received a repayment the penalty was reduced to zero. This, however, all changes at the end of January. It would seem from the guidance that somebody who is filing online for the first time this year, and by not understanding the online software misses the deadline will be due a penalty. What if this is a willing pensioner who is due a £3 tax refund; surely a £100 penalty is completely disproportionate, not to mention a PR disaster for HMRC? The crux of the matter is to ensure that if you have been asked to do one, or know that you are due tax then you should file online by 31st January or be prepared to face a penalty.

Similar regimes for penalties are being rolled out over taxes other than income tax, so the amount of money raised for the government is likely to increase over the coming years. That said, HMRC have come up against judicial opposition to claiming these penalties. Judge Geraint Jones QC has been a thorn in their side and has allowed a number of appeals from disgruntled taxpayers challenging penalties issued by

HMRC. It is clear that his opinion was that HMRC should not use penalties as a method for raising extra revenue. Whilst I agree that there should be procedures in place to encourage timely returns and payment HMRC’s treatment in certain cases has certainly been over zealous. Somebody told me, perhaps jokingly, that in Greece there were more owners of Porsche Cayennes than there were higher-rate taxpayers: it did occur to me that we should second our tax collectors to tackle their situation.

This comment, no matter how flippant, did carry some weight in that it is important that there is a need for a system to be in place.

However, I hope and pray that it is a fair and representative one.

For further information on this, or other matters, please consult: Henderson Black & Co. 149 Market St St Andrews Tel: 01334 472 255

SHOPS & SERVICES

From our Roving Reporter 1. Opened just under 2 years ago (see issue May/June 2010), Bibi’s Bakery, 131 South Street, (01334 461 387) is happily thriving. Manager Jeni Iannetta is as bubbly and enthusiastic as ever, freshly making daily on the premises every conceivable kind of cup cake, macaroon, even cake-on-a-stick known as cake pops – very popular, Jeni assured Reporter, giving him one to try (his verdict? “Yummy!”).

Courses on making cup cakes are a great success. A whole day course costing £150 includes lunch, a Bibi’s apron, and 12 cakes to take home, together with all the skills to make and decorate them.

Jeni told Reporter that people turn up certain that they “can’t do that; but they can, and that’s a lovely thing.” Half-day courses cost £80, making just 6 cakes, but without the detailed decorating skills. A maximum of 10 people per course allows for individual attention, and is “really good fun.” Wedding Cake courses should be available from March. But it’s not only St Andrews that benefits from Jeni’s talents – Bibi’s opened in Edinburgh one year ago, and has just arrived in Aberdeen as well. The shop sells gifts as well as cakes. Go and indulge yourself, says Reporter!

2.

*****

A man with a mission – and a great sense of humour – has opened Reigning Cats and Dogs Ltd. 78 South Street, (01334) 470 873.

James Gorham admitted to Reporter that he likes “to have a sense of fun in business!” He has come back to his roots in Fife after many years south of the Border, where he first acquired a pet shop almost

by accident following his graduation in business management in Canterbury. It took him three years to find suitable premises here, such is St Andrews’ popularity. James was the first member of a campaign run by TV vet Joe Inglis for real pet food, and he sources his pet food carefully as a result. Apart from reptiles (for the moment), all pets are catered for. Reporter was astonished at the range and variety of what is on offer, everything from beds to interactive games, to the usual leads, collars etc. James’ customers come first; he will always do his best to provide whatever anyone asks for. There was one lady in England who wanted a harness to take her pet iguana for walks. He got her one, and added a biker-style jacket to go with it!

Fleece harnesses for dogs are handmade to order. James assured Reporter that his shop provides “quality products at a sensible price.”

Not surprisingly, James has won awards, including Retailer of the Year in 2006. He can advise on pet nutrition: in fact he claims to provide everything for pets “from cradle to grave”, even memorials.

Reporter thinks this must be pet heaven! James can be found on Facebook, on www.reigningcatsanddogs.org.uk also at: james@reigningcatsanddogs.org.uk

*****

3. Reporter learned that Chartered Surveyors J & E Shepherd have recently moved office.

Finding that their lease was at an end, and the building they were occupying in South Street was being sold for redevelopment, they secured new premises above Provost Veterinary Group at 31 Largo Road, St Andrews, (01334) 477 773. The move has been looked on as a blessing in disguise. Ewen Sparks, the partner in charge of the office, and admin staff Carol Ann and Morag all consider that the benefits of central heating, double glazing and parking spaces more than compensate for the loss of a town-centre position! Ewen added, “Our work load is mainly providing residential valuations and Home Reports for houses and flats being placed on the market. We established good contacts with local agents and solicitors, having been located in the town centre for over 20 years.

But as much of our business is now done electronically a central location is not crucial. Current market conditions are not great, but with the advantages the new office offers we now are in a better position to serve our clients professionally, hoping for a return in confidence of the housing market, and better business in 2012.”

(Photo courtesy Ewen Sparks)

St Andrews CATERING 104 South Street, St Andrews T: 01334 473 199

* Balls * Weddings * Dinner Parties

* Birthday Parties * Business Events * Outside Bars

Customised, creative menus designed to meet your budget and exceed you expectations.

Spiritual Light Within Victory Memorial Hall, St Mary’s Place, St Andrews.

Spiritual meetings every Saturday.

Doors open 6.15pm.

Service starts 7.00pm.

Second half starts 8.30pm. until 9.15.

Entry £3.

(Optional raffles £1).

We have different visiting mediums every week.

Private readings are available.

Further information: 01334 476 448

15

ORGANISATIONS Bob Paterson, Chairman, Western Front Association Tayside Branch, contacted this magazine to say that with its help the membership database of the Tayside Branch has now quadrupled.

Western Front Association, Tayside Branch

Bob Paterson welcoming best-selling WW1 author and WW1 TV personality, Mr Peter Hart, to the Branch’s December meeting, where he delivered an enthralling lecture on the Battle of Jutland. (Photo courtesy WFA)

Bob continued, “ the increase in the number seek to glorify war and is totally non-political. of people interested in WW1 is amazing, and The Tayside Branch will meet 7 times in 2012 it’s also very noticeable to see the increased in the Glasite Hall, St Andrews Church, in attendance at branch meetings Dundee. Speakers will cover from the St Andrews area and such WW1 topics as The The WFA does not surrounds. It’s most gratifying Fighting in Mesopotamia, seek to glorify war and indeed. The help of publications the activities of the is totally non-political like St Andrews in Focus have Commonwealth Graves been invaluable in helping the Association, The Battle of the Branch establish itself as one of the Western Somme, and the Battles of Ypres. The Branch Front Association’s leading branches in terms will also put on a full series of commemorative of attendance”. events in due course to acknowledge the Formed in 1980, the Western Front Great War Centenary 2014-18.

Association (WFA) has 60 branches, mainly in the UK, aimed at exploring, learning, and For further details of WFA Tayside sharing the understanding of The Great War. please contact Bob Paterson at It provides the opportunity for like-minded wfatayside@lochnagar.fr or phone people to meet and exchange information 01382 775 000. in a friendly atmosphere. The WFA does not

Aiden Bowman, in his second year at St Andrews University, asks, have you

Got Green Fingers?

Green gardening in St Andrews is hard to come by. While we have some excellent horticultural facilities – such as the Botanic Garden – very rare is the small and ecologically-minded community garden. The St Andrews University Community Garden is one such place, where students, staff, and townsfolk all gather to grow organic fruit and veg. This permaculture garden is helped along by the Transition team at the University and it relies on volunteers to help with upkeep and maintenance.

The garden has been around for a few years now, started some time back by a student at the University and carried on by a small group of dedicated followers ever since. While there has been much interest in the garden as of late, this was not always the case. In the past the group of students running it found it hard to maintain the plot, leaving the work to a addition, it tries to help people think about their personal carbon footprints, small, but dedicated group of intrepid gardeners. and how we, as a community, can help combat the issues of climate Things have changed for the St Andrews University Community change and peak oil. This garden is not about mass food production, it is Garden. This semester alone there have been around 40 new regular about a way of life that is more sustainable and resilient. To this end, the helpers, clocking an astonishing 300 hours of volunteer garden has embarked on some new schemes to show work. Organisers people how they can supplement their diets with foods I hope that we can get have also been keen that they have grown themselves. Also, a plastic bottle lots of members of the about the garden’s greenhouse is in the works – made of recycled drinks St Andrews community bottles – and work is nearly completed on mulching one growth, Carol-Ann Cunningham, who involved in it too! half of the garden in preparation for next year. supports the garden This year the garden has also linked up with a few volunteers commented, “The garden local organisations including East Fife Organic Gardeners, the St Andrews is a really fantastic project to be Botanic Garden, as well as the Community Council, to support each involved in, there is just so much other’s work. enthusiasm for it from everyone. I would really love to see it grow and If you are interested in getting involved in the garden, we are grow and I hope that we can get especially looking for members of the St Andrews community to come lots of members of the St Andrews along. In the future, there will also be a community tree planting community involved in it too!” expected to go ahead in 2012. Please contact us for more information: As a community garden, it is communitygarden@st-andrews.ac.uk , or check out the website at: meant as an educational space, www.st-andrews.ac.uk/transition and click on ‘Community Garden’. where students, staff, and the community can come to learn about where their food comes from. In (Photos courtesy Transition)

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ORGANISATIONS Virginia Fowler, with a delegation from the St Andrews-Loches Alliance, headed by Chairman John Matthews, travelled to Loches in central France last October to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the “Cultural Partnership” between the two towns.

Vive l’Alliance!

The St Andrews-Loches Alliance is regarded as one of the most successful exchange programmes between small towns in Europe.

Councillor William Sangster, a member since its inception, attended as the official representative of the Provost of Fife, Frances Melville. Three undergraduates from the University of St Andrews, Hamish Young, a piper with Tayforth University OTC, and violinists Rachel Poor and Tara Cunningham, from the University Symphony Orchestra, also came.

The weekend’s celebrations began early in glorious autumn sunshine; Pascal Dubrisay, current Président of la Nouvelle Alliance, as it is known in Loches, greeted the St Andreans and their host families been over ninety exchanges between both towns, the perennial problem at la Chancellerie de Loches. Accompanied by our piper Hamish, they in St Andrews being the lack of reasonably priced accommodation; proceeded through the town, bedecked with bunting of Saltires and Loches boasts a large youth hostel. Local families in Loches have very tricolores. They were greeted enthusiastically by the local townsfolk. enthusiastically hosted young people from St Andrews. One of the main The procession stopped at each of the town’s pâtisseries, where the objectives of the Alliance in the past has been to encourage an exchange Scottish delegates were asked to judge the best gâteau in a competition with Madras College and this was also discussed. commemorating the Anniversary.

On Saturday evening almost one hundred delegates and members At the Town Hall, they were received by Marc Angenault, First visited the nearby Château de Montpoupon, surrounded by lush forests, Deputy Mayor. Officials and guests assembled in the Salle de Mariage, formerly the hunting grounds of the French Monarchy, frequented still by whose walls had been decorated with Royal Stewart tartan fifteen the hunting fraternity. The Château de Montpoupon boasts a museum years previously when la Nouvelle Alliance was first established. Marc dedicated to the history of hunting (Musée de Veneur). We were given Angenault, William Sangster, John Matthews, and his counterpart in a very comprehensive tour of the 12th century Château by the present Loches, Pascal Dubrisay, spoke, highlighting the many successful proprietor, Comte Amoury de Louvencourt. One of the highlights of the exchanges of the past fifteen years. Pascal Dubrisay touched on the visit was a concert by the Trompe de Chasse (hunting horn) ensemble. long friendship between the Scots and the At they end, the horn players joined forces French, dating back to the signing of “The with our piper to give a rendition of “Amazing Auld Alliance” in 1295 by John Balliol and Grace”. This prompted a spontaneous Philip IV of France. Monsieur Dubrisay burst of song from both the Scottish and explained how the Scots came to the aid the French guests, creating a truly magical of Joan of Arc in 1429. The Scots Guard moment against the backdrop of the or la Garde Ecossaise were subsequently illuminated Château. The extremely elegant deployed as loyal bodyguards to the French Comtesse de Louvencourt, resplendent Monarchy, many of them later settling in in riding attire, served a glass of French France with dual nationality. Monsieur sparkling wine to the musicians. Many of Dubrisay said that Marie de Guise was a the paintings in the museum are by Henri regular visitor to Loches before her marriage de Lunares, whose exquisite designs from to James V in St Andrews Cathedral in nature and wildlife are reproduced in the 1538. famous silk scarves by Hermès of Paris, the Letters of congratulation, outlining their main sponsors of the museum, supplying continued support for the Alliance, were also many of the artefacts, including received from Frances Melville, Provost of carriages, saddlery and riding tack.

Fife, and Mrs Mary Freeborn, Life President Members, including the Mayor of of the St Andrews-Loches Alliance. John Loches Jean-Jacques Descamps and his Matthews presented a bronze statue wife and MEP Milène Descamps, attended of Mary Queen of Scots and a current a celebratory dinner at the Auberge de edition of “St Andrews – Portrait of a City”, Montpoupon. Musical interludes, including

by Peter Adamson and Lorn Macintyre. a selection of traditional Scottish airs, were Marc Angenault, on behalf of the Mayor provided by our violinists Tara and Rachel of Loches, presented an engraved crystal between the sumptuous courses. carafe. Councillor William Sangster offered On Sunday we were taken to the an engraved silver and oak quaich on behalf recently renovated Church of St Antoine. The of the Provost of Fife to the First Deputy new apse of the Church houses some of the Mayor. town’s most important religious art treasures, After the speeches the delegation including two outstanding paintings, thought The St Andrews-Loches Alliance is enjoyed a recital by the two young violinists. by some French experts to be by the 17th regarded as one of the most successful Hamish, resplendent in Highland dress, century Italian Baroque artist, Caravaggio. exchange programmes between small played “Scotland the Brave”, leading the Those who attended church were warmly towns in Europe procession from the Town Hall to the square welcomed by the local priest, Père Benoît where the crowd, waving Scottish flags, had Menoux. Tara, Rachel, and Hamish gave gathered to greet us. The party split into two groups with the committee short recitals from the organ loft of the Church. The bagpipe playing was heading for a working lunch at le Musée Lansyer, while the remainder particularly well received by the congregation. proceeded to la Gerbe d’Or, whose chef and proprietor, Didier Marc, has The party made its way to le Jardin Publique, where an oak tree was welcomed many visitors from St Andrews over the years, and has visited planted commemorating the Anniversary. The remainder of the afternoon St Andrews several times, he and his sous-chef working alongside the was spent at the local Community Centre, at a tea dance with traditional chef of the Doll’s House Restaurant.

French and Scottish dancing. This proved a great success, many of Le Musée Lansyer, is the former home of the French landscape the local community, including the Mayor of Loches and his wife, pupils artist Emmanuel Lansyer (1835-1893). He bequeathed his magnificent from the Lycée Georges Besse, and St Leonards School, participating. period home next to the Château, and most of his works to Loches.

The St Andrews delegation were invited to give their final verdict on An outstanding exhibition of his entire works was held at the Crawford the previous day’s cakes. The overall winner was a delicious chocolate Arts Centre, St Andrews, in 2000. We were not the first visitors to dine gâteau entitled Tentation Chocolat made by Monsieur Gibaud from the in the artist’s former home. The American artist James Whistler was a Pâtisserie Quintefol. great friend of Lansyer. He and his wife Beatrice spent their honeymoon The 15th Anniversary celebrations sadly came to a close around in Loches in 1888, together sketching most of the town’s important 8.00pm when all the participants joined hands for a traditional rendition landmarks and buildings. of “Auld Lang Syne” with “Vive l’Alliance” from our many friends and Discussions were held on ways to strengthen the links between associates in Loches. our two communities, particularly between young people. There have (Photos courtesy Virginia Fowler)

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TOWN & GOWN Barbara Crawford, Honorary Reader in History, University of St Andrews

A Distinguished Career Born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, “still in I didn’t know what it was.” Barbara’s search a sense home to me”, Barbara Crawford took her to Norway, and she discovered that came to St Andrews as a student in 1959 it was a wooden log-built house, very high to study Modern History and English. “Like status, “which had been imported into the many other people” she soon swapped Island”, as well as to the Faroes and Iceland.

English for Medieval History, thus setting the The tax collector lived and worked in such a course of her life. Why particularly Medieval house. “In my youthful enthusiasm, I thought History? Because it was not taught in school it would be fun to try and find the traces of his and was therefore fresh and exciting. After house. So we embarked on this excavation graduating in 1963 in Modern and Medieval in 1977” in Shetland. Excavation continued History, Barbara went to Cambridge to study into the ’80s and ’90s until “we actually found for a Post-graduate Diploma in Archaeology, the remains of a wooden house – quite specialising in the Anglo-Saxon and Viking extraordinary! And I am pretty certain in my periods. She then returned to St Andrews own mind that that is the site of the house that “as a wife”! Robert Crawford had appeared was referred to in 1299. The wooden floor as a lecturer in Botany in St Andrews during was almost completely well preserved, the Barbara’s last year as a student and had walls had all gone, of course, but we found been introduced to her by a flatmate who where the solid timbers had lain.” St Andrews thought he seemed lonely.

University, Shetland Island Council, and Barbara would have liked to embark on most especially the Russell Trust, funded research into the Scandinavian settlements the excavation, which was also used to in Scotland. However, at that time there train students on the joint archaeology and being no-one in St Andrews to supervise history degree course. Shetlanders were such work, Barbara turned to the historical delighted with both the students and the period, specialising in the Earls of Orkney outcome of their work. In those days, as and Caithness, a joint Viking Earldom, “and Barbara emphasises, there was no mains that’s been wonderful.” The ‘60s were a time electricity, scant modern facilities, and some of university expansion, allowing Barbara to 20 students who happily integrated into ease her way into teaching while continuing Island life to everyone’s benefit. Interestingly, to research her chosen the word stofa forms the field, until in 1971 she was base for our word stove: Excavation continued appointed Lecturer. it referred to the ’house into the ’80s and ’90s that is heated’, the winter A holiday in Orkney with a new baby so enthused warming house with good until “we actually the young couple that they fires. found the remains of bought a neglected, but No longer physically almost intact, vernacular digging, Barbara is a wooden house – cottage, which over the last consolidating her original quite extraordinary!

40 years they have restored, PhD thesis of 1971 on the adding some modern Earldoms of Orkney and comforts, such as a front porch! Next Caithness into a book to be published next year they hope to install mains electricity. year. President of the Society of Antiquaries Barbara’s research led her to Shetland’s first of Scotland for the last three years, Barbara document, written in 1299. It concerned the is also a Member of the Norwegian Academy, assessment for royal rents and taxes on the and a Fellow of the Royal Society of island of Papa Stour, but had not previously Edinburgh. She was a Commissioner of the been studied in depth. Barbara “discovered Royal Commission on Ancient & Historical it had some fascinating bits of information in Monuments of Scotland, has chaired the it.” Included was an accusation by a woman Treasure Trove Advisory Panel for Scotland, crofter that the tax collector on Shetland was and is currently Honorary Director of the cheating his master. Though the fine details of Strathmartine Centre for Scottish History, set the argument are unclear, it was said to have up in St Andrews by the late Dr Ronald Cant taken place in a house called a stofa. “This to support research and education in Scottish was my first introduction to this word, stofa. history.

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In April 2011 Barbara received a letter informing her that she was to be awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for her services to History and Archaeology.

18 October saw Barbara at Buckingham Palace to receive her award from Princess Anne (the Queen was about to leave for Australia). “I was very honoured to be given this award. It was most heart-warming” – and one might add, well merited! Barbara was impressed that Princess Anne knew she was from Scotland, even though that had not been mentioned in the citation. “We had a wonderful day,” ending with pink champagne in the recently refurbished St Pancras Hotel, “which is fabulous!”

“There are a lot of things,” still to do.

Barbara is “leading a project for sculpting a statue of Bishop Wardlaw for the 600th Anniversary of the University.” Designed by David Annand, it will be a full length bronze, hopefully to go on the lawn in St Mary’s Quad. There is also a smaller bronze by Alan Herriott, which is to go on permanent exhibition in MUSA, the University’s Museum on the Scores. This is based on Wardlaw’s effigy in the Cathedral museum, and as Barbara pointed out, “no other university in Scotland has the founder’s effigy from that period in 1440 – quite staggering.” Barbara has kindly offered to bring readers up to date on this project in a following issue.

(Photo courtesy Robert Crawford, at Buckingham Palace)

TOWN & GOWN From Patrick O’Hare, President of the University of St Andrews Students’ Association

Introducing the Student Sabbaticals

At the Students’ Association there are four elected sabbatical officers who have taken a year out of their studies to work as representatives of the student body in order to make the St Andrews experience the best it possibly can be. The Association (housed in the Students’ Union on Market Street) has three main spheres of activity: campaigning and representation, development and extramural activities, entertainments and events.

As President, I am the ultimate spokesperson for students and I work with the Student Representative Council (SRC) on accommodation, ethics and environment, equal opportunities and community relations strategies. Nationally, I work with other student leaders in making sure students are heard; internally I’m involved in preparing the multimillion pound redevelopment of the Union.

Sam Fowles is the Director of Representation.

He works alongside the President in representing student views to the highest levels at the University and to the outside world. He also deals with improving aspects of the academic experience, such as advising, feedback and employment skills.

A key part of Sam’s portfolio is managing the new School Presidents to make sure that these academic issues are effectively dealt with.

David Graves is the Director of Student Development and Activities (DOSDA). A keen musician himself, David oversees the many, vibrant student societies and creative arts groups. So far this year he has put on a successful societies’ Dragons’ Den event and launched the Professional Skills Curriculum for Undergraduates. The clubs and societies he oversees range from the oldest (and some would say the finest) debating club in the world and Mermaids, St Andrews Performing Arts Fund, through to the nonetheless important Caramel Wafer Appreciation Society, and the infamous Harry Potter and Gin Society.

Rollo Strickland is our Director of Events and Services, meaning he’s the main one to thank for the amazing time to be had in Freshers’ Week and beyond. After giving the St Andrews’ music scene a new lease of life, rebranding and revitalizing the popular music society, he’s now pushing to put St Andrews firmly on the musical map! He works with the best of British and local talent to make this tiny wee town as much fun as possible. So far this year he has put on sell-out shows with legendary DJ Mr Scruff, as well as local folk hero King Creosote. He’s putting on a gig with the excellent Glasgow indie folk rock band Vetiver, and then he’ll be starting the party with rising star DJ Erol Alkan in Venue 1 of the Union.

On the team, Patrick said, “The Sab Team has been working really well together this year, we have a diverse range of skills and really spur each other on. These are tough times for students, and it’s important that we try to defend our education against profiteering and elitism.”

David added, “St Andrews is famed for the diversity and pro-activity of societies and extracurricular activities undertaken by its students. Perhaps because it is quite a small town, students are especially eager to make their own fun. The result is that St Andrews has one of the most exciting student scenes for music, art, drama, and even student entrepreneurship. This is, at least in part, encouraged by the financial support and structural assistance which the Association is able to provide.”

Alistair Moffat – Rector However, beyond the sabbaticals, there are other elected figures in St Andrews who help to shape the student experience.

Perhaps most notable amongst them is the Rector.

Elected every 3 years, the Rector chairs University Court. This year’s October election had a record turnout of over 49%, in which we chose a new Rector. Out of a field of candidates, which included Conservative politician and alumnus Michael Forsyth, ex-footballer Pat Nevin, broadcaster Abeer MacIntyre, and Socialist Politician Colin Fox, the winner in a landslide was Alistair Moffat, author and former director of the Edinburgh Fringe festival.

On his election, Alistair Moffat said, “When 600 years ago the candles of enlightenment were first lit in St Andrews, they shone light into some dark corners. Now cold winds are blowing and storms gathering out there and the candles are flickering and growing dim.

But what is wonderful about St Andrews are its students, and with their energy and commitment, St Andrews will burn brightly again without a doubt.”

Together, the Sabbaticals, the Rector, and the various elected student representatives work together to make the University and the Union the vibrant, forward-looking student hub that it is.

(Photos courtesy of the Union)

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TOWN & GOWN Rebecca Emerick, studying Russian and French in her final year at St Andrews University, has a

A Passion for Russia

Who knew Russia has active volcanoes? Quite a few in fact, which simply displaying the words ‘Vlad Listyev has been killed‘. No account sit dotted along The Pacific Ring of Fire entirely dominating the or explanation has ever been offered for his murder. As such the case skyline in the far-off wiggly peninsula called Kamchatka. This largely has never disappeared from people’s minds. unknown polar region, also home to the largest grizzly bears in the Now I’ve set the scene, let me tell you why I think Russia is great world, was kept firmly under lock and key for the whole Communist despite it all. era. Consequently, it’s one of the world’s last completely untouched There is a very famous quotation of Fyodor Tyutchev’s that Russia wildernesses. Honestly, who knows anything about Russia? cannot be understood simply by the mind, I certainly didn’t until I spent a year there. I’m now a fifth-year The same is true of any culture far removed from one’s own, but student at St Andrews University and I look back on my time there as perhaps, as Tyutchev went on to say, Russia will always remain the the best year of my life. Yes, I admit, it is outside many of our comfort greatest of enigmas to foreign onlookers. Why then? Certainly in zones, and yes, its government has often taken a strong stance recent years The Cold War did a lot to enforce this idea negatively, against reason and human rights. But in general terms I believe it is but the same is true of her history. For centuries her identity, rooted in wrong to judge her using western measures, common to well-fed and orthodoxy, has focussed around belonging neither to the east nor to the well-educated people with a relatively stable standard of living. The west, but to her own unique and deeply spiritual path. word ‘undemocratic’ is a default term used, in my opinion, without any It’s this unique path which interests me so much, and why the real thought or consideration. The truth is that true democracy didn’t University’s Russian Society is planning a week in April devoted to the come quickly to us either. Russia is one of the largest countries in the most interesting aspects of Russian culture. We’re calling it Russia world, home to such a diverse mix of races and needs Week. It aims to be a vivid mix: music, art, film, that it is virtually impossible to represent them all science too, with a few well-known guest speakers I believe firm ‘democratically‘. The concept is of no interest to many as well. Our grand opening in the Byre will celebrate there, and that’s not backward thinking, it’s just extreme understanding of one the lyrical side of that famous Russian soul, with circumstances. poetry, piano recitals of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and another is the key to At present, Russia is the inevitable product of Rachmaninov, as well as a musical tour through the widespread corruption, absolute poverty, and 80 years Old Soviet Union with folk song and choir performed good diplomatic ties of closed borders. The weight of all this has proven in all major Slavic languages. crippling, and has led to the mass emigration of many Elsewhere in the line-up we have lectures of those rich enough to get out. For those of us who love the country by students; literature round-table lectures given by teachers as an and who have been treated first hand to the richness of her culture and introduction to Russian writing; film screenings about the true nature hospitality, the situation is desperate. The truth is that Russia has been of Perestroika; science and maths; presentations from proud citizens outstanding in all great fields and remains a world leader in creative of the former Soviet republics; throat singing; art exhibitions; dancing; thought. exotic food; not to mention lots more academic lectures.

A large part of the problem is the memory of the ‘dark nineties’, after We’re devoting the 21 – 22nd April to our big headline acts. Bridget the traumatic collapse of ‘The Soviet Union‘; it’s what led to the cult of Kendall, the former BBC correspondent to the Kremlin and recipient Putin. Imagine for a moment living your entire life without the concept of many prestigious journalism prizes will be here, as well as Oleg of expense or ambition, and then comes a sudden and almighty rupture Borushkov, chairman of the International Festival of Russian Poetry and across the whole of society. First of all people’s savings disappear, Arts. Other big names are still under negotiation, but we are working to you are told to get money any way you can, and gradually ruthless give you some real star turns. gangsters start to take control. In another short space of time all the In short, we intend it to be an exposé of healthy knowledge aimed sporting and cultural prestige so precious to Soviet society vanishes, at vanquishing the mythic prejudice about what life must have been like homeless people and alcoholics appear on the streets for the first behind The Iron Curtain. I believe firm understanding of one another is time ever; theft and murder become a feature of daily life on and off the key to good diplomatic ties, which is what Russia is in need of if she the news. Consider, for example, the murder of the well-loved and ever hopes to regenerate. outspoken TV presenter, Vladislav Listyev, who was shot dead shortly So come, enjoy the extravaganza we are planning for you and leave after his last news broadcast. No money or valuables were taken, his behind any misinformed prejudice. There’s a lot of good about Russia popularity and views were the target. Public grief was unprecedented and we’re going to do it justice!

– for a whole 24 hours many major TV stations shut down completely (Photo courtesy Rebecca Emerick)

Rebecca (on the right), in Rostov

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TOWN & GOWN Dr Elizabeth Scott (Bettine Buchan-Hepburn) MB ChB St Andrews unveils

An Unsung St Andrews Hero The folk you meet at St Andrews University can accounts of ancient wars. Coupled with his own change your life. Kate Middleton would attest experiences on the field of battle, he began to think to that! I myself met my husband here and can up military tactics very different from the standards vouch for the lasting quality of a meld of history, of the time, where untrained men were formed into economics, and medicine. We won’t feature in the deep squares and expected to withstand cannon Kate Kennedy Parade, though Wills and Kate may, fire. Abandoned by Gray in Holland, Hepburn but there are matriculated St Andrews heroes who refused to leave his men and led the tattered have prior claim over many of the great and good remnant of his company of Scots jailbirds and who do figure in the procession. vagrants to enlist under King Gustavus Adolphus of John Hepburn, founder and first colonel of Sweden, who was raising an army to fight first the The Royal Scots, Marshal of France and Cardinal Poles and then the Imperialists.

Richelieu’s “Golden Knight”, is one such. Called Poor harvests and plague at home had at the time, “The best soldier in Christendom and encouraged thousands of Scots to follow consequently the World”, he remains a role model Hepburn’s path in the hope of fame and fortune, for any young Scot. Third son of George Hepburn, especially the latter! Something about the tall redan East Lothian farmer at Athelstaneford, he haired young Hepburn must have impressed the powered his way through school in Haddington Swedish King, for he put him in charge of training to win a bursary to St Leonards College, at that the Scots. Hepburn used methods advocated by time the most Reformist College in the University.

Dutch military experts and within the year had A common saying of the time when talking about a fully trained Brigade of three thousand men.

John Knox or his followers was that they had “drunk Gustavus promoted him to lead them as their deep at St Leonard’s College well”.

Colonel and later knighted him for his efforts in Hepburn matriculated when he was about sixteen, older than most the Polish war. Hepburn gave his men green sashes to differentiate them bejants: the Admirable Crichton, for instance, matriculated at ten. He must from the Swedes who wore yellow. He called them “The Green Brigade” have been irked by the restrictive College regulations. Students wore a and led them beside Gustavus Adolphus all the way to Munich and back, long, black, hooded robe, belted at the waist. Except when they were winning battles for the King time and again. led to lectures in Priory Court or to weekly exercise on St Nicholas’ fields “The king could do naught without him” wrote Robert Monro who, beside the East Sands, they were expected to have their heads down having fought for the King of Denmark, had joined his friend and had working. Even the washerwoman, the only female allowed in College, become his lieutenant-colonel, taking over the Green Brigade when Sir had to be over fifty years of age. Becoming friends with a third-year John eventually fell out with the Swedish King and left for home. student, Robert Monro from the minor aristocracy of Easter Ross, was Now rich and famous, Hepburn was knighted again by Charles I. Hepburn’s stimulus to escape. Unless students were rich or wished to In 1633 he was given a warrant to raise a regiment to be lent to the enter the Law or the Ministry, few bothered to incur the French King Louis XIII. Returning home, he recruited expense of graduation. Monro was not committed to experienced soldiers from all over Scotland, naming Returning home, he either profession, but wanted to continue his studies at them “The Royal Scots”. Under him The Royal Scots Poitiers as many St Andrews students did at the time. played a major part in winning Lorraine for France. recruited experienced He and Hepburn took off for France at the end of the Hepburn by now was a friend of Cardinal Richelieu soldiers from all over academic year of 1616. It changed both their lives, and a favourite of Louis XIII. He was promoted to because instead of coming back to Scotland with a Scotland, naming them Marshal of France, but had little time to enjoy the professional qualification, they both joined the French honour. Sadly, on 8 July 1636, Sir John was killed by “The Royal Scots King’s Regiment of Guards in Paris and trained as a sniper as he made a reconnaissance of besieged soldiers.

Saverne’s defences. He was buried in state in Toul When they arrived home a couple of years later they were fully Cathedral, a Marshal’s baton on his coffin, and Louis XIII raised a huge trained, highly-educated young men, not a common combination at the mausoleum over his grave. time. Monro was to write the world’s first Regimental history – Monro, his Surely the tall, red-haired Colonel Sir John Hepburn, carrying the Expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-Keys – published in baton of Marshal of France, has a claim to walk ahead of Kate Kennedy’s London in 1637. Hepburn was to cut his teeth as a soldier under Colonel coach, his friend Robert Monro with regimental diary under his arm, Sir Andrew Gray in his disastrous foray to support Frederick of the beside him. Having researched his life and written his story, The Best Palatinate’s claim to the throne of Bohemia. James VI and I’s daughter, Soldier, with help from St Andrews History Department, I would support Elizabeth, had married Frederick and Scotland was up in arms about his claim. I hope anyone who reads my book (see page 7 Reviews),will the dreadful way the Hapsburgs were harrying her and her husband. feel the same.

Hepburn’s ability to read Latin enabled him to read Roman historians’ (Image courtesy Elizabeth Scott)

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TOWN & GOWN Alexander Co is a 3rd-year student in Social Anthropology and Psychology. He hopes to show the film described below in February.

A Glimpse into the Lives of Modern-Day Tibetan Buddhist Nuns Our expedition team consisted of 6 students from the University of St Andrews, brought together by our common passion to understand first-hand the ways of a special group of people. By May 2011, we were ready to go. Adam Miklos, from Hungary, was the film director and writer. Stefan Salow, from Germany, served as the equipment manager and cameraman. Nadia Buhova, from Bulgaria, was the treasurer. Tenzin Dolma, a Tibetan from India, was our translator and cultural resource. Kasia BylowAntkowiak, a PhD student from Poland, came as our field supervisor. I, from the Philippines, co-ordinated the whole project.

We travelled to Nepal in Summer 2011, to live side by side with Tibetan Buddhist nuns in two nunneries, and film their lives and activities. Our aim is to make an artistic and eye-opening documentary about them.

There, I caught a glimpse of what it is like to live a life of scholarship and rituals, where “spirituality” is not another aspect of one’s life alongside “work”, “family”, and “social life”, but it is the central feature around which all others revolve. This account shares how my old assumptions had finally to give way to a wider reality as lived out by the nuns.

Assumption 1: Nuns live in solitude. We will have a problem communicating with them.

From my observation, the vocation of being in solitude serves a purpose; for instance, to focus one’s thoughts and intentions during prayer ceremonies and meditation. But that should not be confused with the personality of the person. The first time I met the Head Nun (no doubt the most revered figure in the nunnery), I remembered how her tender and humble smile transcended the language barrier, and was enough to tell me that my team was warmly welcomed. During our first few dinners with them, Ani (meaning ‘nun’ in Tibetan) Jiangchub told us how she asked for special permission from the Head Nun to allow some of them to “entertain” the new guests.

That meant that she, and the other nuns, forewent their compulsory evening study time just to ensure that we were coping well. Of course, these dinners were never quiet, being filled with stories from both sides. On one occasion, Ani Pema revealed how she had been a stubborn and mischievous girl until she decided to become a nun at the age of 15. When her school principal heard about this, he literally took Ani Pema, then already wearing the maroon robes, to all the classrooms of her old school to prove that “transformation” is indeed possible! A roar of laughter followed! More of these funny and unusual anecdotes punctuated our conversations, and I believe these solidified our friendship within a short span of time.

Assumption 2: Nuns have chosen the spiritual life.

All differences amongst them have been dropped.

During our short stay with them, when asked what their motivation had been for choosing their vocation, the nuns would answer in a chorus of diverse melodies. There is no one reason for pursuing the path, and the nuns give different meanings to their vocation as they grow older. It is clear how Ani Phuntsok was already a Masters graduate of Buddhist Philosophy at 29 (and currently pursuing her Doctorate degree), while Ani Sangye is a student under her, at age 39. Ani Yeshi, at 21, who chose to become a nun after her grandmother’s death two years ago, presently wants to use her

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role to improve the social services in Nepal, rather than devote her life to Buddhist scholarship. Whilst the Tibetan Buddhist tradition generally revels in formalised texts to elucidate human psychology, Ani Shenphen takes a step outside the norm by expressing her understanding of human emotions like love, sadness, and hope, through breathtaking poems (many in English), drawings, and paintings.

As for Ani Pema, she plans to participate in the arduous 3-year 3-month solitary meditation retreat that her tradition takes pride in, yet is quick to offer her reviews on the latest Hollywood films, or is proud to admit that she admired Bon Jovi in her younger days. It is one vocation, but it houses a myriad of voices – all beautiful in their own ways.

Assumption 3: The spiritual path is serious and tough training. No fun is allowed.

Picture Ani Pema holding an oddshaped string bean in the middle of a noisy vegetable market. Quickly turning to me and making a fuss of it, she impressed in me the image of a good nun – someone who can balance the joy and seriousness required. When I asked her some follow-up questions after the Tibetan Philosophy class (as I am starting to learn the language myself), she smirked and advised me to “take a break”. Whenever I tried to converse in Tibetan with the nuns, I had to endure the embarrassment of being a laughing stock, and only after the uproar amongst them had subsided would they correct my odd pronunciations. On Saturdays, the younger ones would play football, and my team never hesitated to tag along and play with them. After our departure, I stayed in touch via email with Ani Jiangchub. In one of our exchanges, she revealed how, when someone in class accidentally speaks “bad Tibetan” (being more familiar with the Nepali language, as some nuns are still catching up on their Tibetan proficiency), someone would start addressing her as “Alex”, and everyone would burst out laughing! These moments prove how spirituality and the goal of enlightenment need not be a serious chase for dead-cold perfection. In fact, the pursuit may be something more, something that embraces mistakes and limitations, something that allows them to learn in joy as they attain grander versions of themselves.

Our documentary film is entitled “Daughters of Dolma: The Spiritual Journey of Tibetan Buddhist Nuns in Nepal”. Like us on Facebook and check to stay updated.

We wish to thank our supervisors, Professor Mario Aguilar; Dr Mattia Fumanti; and Dr Robert Burgoyne: also our funders, The University of St Andrews; Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland; The Spalding Trust UK; The Richardson Foundation; Rogue Productions; and all other individual donors for lending their time, expertise and resources to make this project happen.

(Photos courtesy Alex Co)

Senior nu ns formin g a line a they wait s ed Sherab G for the arrival of th yaltsen R e in monaste ry’s abbo poche, the t

Head Nun leading a ritual

ceremony

The younger nuns taking a break from football

having the nuns w filming sophy debate re c lm fi e Th tyle Philo uddhist-s Tibetan B

TOWN & GOWN Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, is in her 4th year studying Sustainable Development

Fife Futures Forum

together, the Forum made its participants The group has developed an education feel part of a wider movement, reinforcing pack meant to inspire others to run similar individual drive and initiatives within motivation. The Principal their communities.

The initiative was officially and Vice-Chancellor of the Resources from the launched in October when the University of St Andrews Forum and education students ran a 2-day Forum and pack can be found opened the discussion. personal networking event Further presentations online by searching: were delivered by the Fife Futures Forum.

R&A, Ecoschools, Scottish Wildlife Trust, This includes footage of presentations on St Andrews Sustainability Institute, and local organisations and what they are doing University of St Andrews Estate Team. for sustainability.

From left to right, David Collington, Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, Alex Gnanapragasam and Kirsten Jenkins after successfully completing the waterwheel challenge in Dartmoor.

(Photo courtesy the Forum)

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Four students from the University of St Andrews reached the final of the ‘npower’ Future Leaders Challenge with their community and environmental initiative, Fife Futures Forum. The students’ entry took them into the first part of the finals, during which they attended a team-building weekend on Dartmoor with other teams from across the UK. ‘npower’ is an energy company that runs a competition to encourage higher and further education students to engage with their communities on an environmental issue.

The idea behind Fife Futures Forum is to bring together students and the wider community to develop partnerships for building a sustainable world, to bring together students and staff from universities across Scotland to inspire and learn from each other.

The students decided to target their initiative at the community level because of its ability to both reinforce individual behaviours and influence local and national policy.

Empowered groups acting at the community level have the potential for change at local and national government level through writing to their representatives and campaigning.

The initiative was officially launched in October when the students ran a 2-day Forum and personal networking event. They encourage positive action, highlighting the ability of every individual to take tangible steps towards creating a society we all want to see. Members of the local and Fife community, businesses and charities, and students from further and higher education from across Scotland attended the Forum, starting a dialogue, not only within the student community, but also creating new partnerships between these larger community groups. By bringing like-minded people

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EVENTS

Selected Events Every Wednesday in term-time – 1.15pm. Younger Hall, North Street. Lunchtime concert. Ticket £2 at the door, (free for members of the Music Centre). Contact the Music Centre: 01334 462 226, music@st-andrews.ac.uk Wednesday, 11 January – 7.30pm. St Andrews Town Hall. Our African birds, a talk by Will Cresswell for the Fife Branch of the Scottish Ornithological Society. Contact: Karen Dick, 01334 848 278.

Thursday, 19 January – 1.00pm. MUSA, The Scores. Inspired by: the carved stone.

A talk by Richard Welander, Head of Collections at Historic Scotland. Free. Contact: 01334 461 660, rjb54@st-andrews.ac.uk Saturday, 21 January – 6.00pm. The Playhouse Cinema, PERTH. The Enchanted Island. A new production from the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast with David Daniels (Prospero) and Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax) as the formidable foes, also Plácido Domingo and many more. Tickets £15 adults; £12.50 concessions/ students/ under 15s. Contact: Ken Creelman, 07870 552304.

Wednesday, 25 January – 8.00pm. St Leonards Music School, The Pends. Allan Neave, guitar. Robert Irvine, cello. Music by Vivaldi; Domeniconi; Dyens; SaintSaëns; Gnattai; Fauré; Casals; JS Bach; Zenamon; de Falla. Tickets at the door, £11, Concessions £10, Students £3, Children £2. Contact: www.saint-andrews.co.uk/smc Thursday, 26 January – 8.00pm. School 1, University Quad, North Street. Balmerino: recent developments at the former Cistercian Abbey – a talk by Dr Julie Kerr for the Archaeological Society. Contact: Secretary, janemwatkinson@hotmail.com Friday, 27 to Monday, 30 January – 1.00-4.00pm. Preservation Trust Museum, North Street. Exhibition, by Volunteer Research Group. Includes Forgotten Golf Clubs of St Andrews, selection of scrapbooks, etc. Contact: 01334 477 152.

BUTLER & CO

10 Church Street, St Andrews Deli and Wrap Bar

Saturday, 28 January – 10.00am. PreservationTrust Museum, 12 North Street. Coffee morning. Contact: 01334 477 152.

Saturday, 4 February – 9.00am-1.00pm. Argyle Street car park. Farmers’ Market.

Wednesday, 8 February – 7.30pm. St Andrews Town Hall. Seabirds of the Western Pacific. A talk by Angus Hogg for the Fife Branch of the Scottish Ornithological Society. Contact: Karen Dick, 01334 848 278.

Thursday, 9 February – 1.00pm. MUSA on The Scores. A talk by Caroline Wilkinson, Professor of Cranio-facial Identification at the University of Dundee, shedding some light on the techniques used to recreate faces in 2 and 3D using human remains, example, a forensic drawing of Bishop Kennedy. Free. Contact: 01334 461 660, rjb54@st-andrews.ac.uk Saturday, 11 February - 5.00pm.The Playhouse Cinema, PERTH. Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. A new production from the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Conductor, Fabio Luisi, with Deborah Voigt as Brünnhilde, Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried. Tickets £15 adults; £12.50 concessions/ students/ under 15s. Contact: Ken Creelman, 07870 552304.

Thursday, 16 February – 6.00pm. Physics Building, North Haugh. An introduction to X-ray crystallography by Dr Gregor Hagelüken, School of Chemistry, for the Beacon Lecture Series. Contact: 01334-462275, rmd10@st-andrews.ac.uk Friday, 17 to Sunday, 19 February – A Medieval Music Festival – as part of the University’s 600th celebrations, a weekend exploring Medieval art and culture with a particular emphasis on music & St Andrews. The University Chapel Choir & resident academics are joined by Cappella Nova & renowned speakers and musicians.

Contact the Younger Hall: 01334 462 226.

Saturday, 18 February – 10.00am-5.00pm. Parliament Hall, South Street. 600 years of Town and Gown: Archaeology and History in St Andrews. Day Conference; University of St Andrews Archaeological Society. Tickets, £25 from the School of History, St John’s House, 71 South Street.

Wednesday, 22 February – 7.30pm. Younger Hall, North Street. Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Conductor, Robin Ticciati. Cello, Andreas Brantelid. Music by Berlioz, Schumann, Brahms. Contact: 01334 462 226.

Monday, 27 February – 8.00pm. St Leonards Music School, The Pends. Passacaglia – Flute, recorders, violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord. Music by Handel; Marais; Teleman; JS Bach; Vivaldi; Gemeniani; Oswald. Tickets at the door, £11, Concessions £10, Students £3, Children £2. Contact: www.saint-andrews.co.uk/smc Wednesday, 29 February – 5.30pm. Younger Hall, North Street. Scottish Chamber Orchestra Early Evening Concert. Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn; Aisling O’Dea, violin; Simon Smith, piano. Music by Ligeti. Contact: the Music Centre, 01334 462 226.

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hosting

Minick of St Andrews Artisan Butchers Ltd

OUT & ABOUT Alistair Lawson, Field Officer, ScotWays

Of Coos and Calves, Bulls and Bullocks A person closely associated with this publication has asked ScotWays to comment on the situation whereby, on the Fife Coastal Path just east of St Andrews, walkers frequently find themselves sharing space with cattle.

I should explain that this request was prompted by the following newspaper item, which appeared in “The Telegraph” of 20th October:

when the farmer approached me and explained that the bull in it was “grumpy”, having just been bought and having been subjected to a long and unwelcome journey in a cattleDog Walker Trampled to Death by Cows in Field truck. The farmer expected it A 67-year-old woman was trampled to death by cows while walking to settle down after a day or her dog, an inquest heard yesterday. Geraldine Grace was found two but, for the meantime, he dead by another dog walker in a field containing cows, calves, and a advised me of an alternative single bull, near her home in Bridgewater, Somerset, on June 2. The route. Cattle, like us, have coroner ruled that her death had been an accident and that, despite temperaments, but the hiker lack of solid evidence, it was most likely she had been trampled to can generally take comfort from the fact that an animal which consistently death by some of the 47 animals in the field. shows itself to be “difficult” will be the first to go down the road to the ScotWays frequently receives queries as to whether farmers are allowed abattoir! The farmer doesn’t want unnecessary hassle – or danger – and to graze their cattle in places – rights of way, specifically – where the will weed out persistent troublemakers. public are likely to be. The short answer is “yes”, because the agricultural Bulls aside, the public are not infrequently just as concerned about industry could not operate otherwise and also because, over many passing through a field of cows. They, too, are generally only concerned hundreds of years, long before “recreational hikers” evolved, travellers with grazing, except when they have young with them, in which case through the countryside accepted what they their strong maternal instinct takes found in front of them, thought nothing of it, precedence. Every piece of advice on the and accepted passing through farm stock as subject warns the public of this fact and wholly unremarkable. stresses the folly of taking a dog into a field The modern hiker can be comforted by of cows and calves – an elementary piece the fact that there are rules and regulations of advice which the lady in Bridgewater laid down for the guidance of cattle-owning seems to have ignored. In those farmers. The 1967 Countryside (Scotland) circumstances, a deep, primeval instinct Act clarifies that a bull may be grazed on or in the cow’s subconscious asserts itself, adjacent to a right of way if (i) the bull is not and she thinks “Wolf!”; the dog is seen as a more than ten months old, (ii) is not one of threat, is challenged and chased off. More the recognised dairy breeds, and (iii) is with often than not, this is the point at which the cows or heifers. In practice, the hiker does dog’s owner becomes involved and things not need to be troubled by the need to make go rapidly downhill from there. The standard these judgements, in that the farmer will be advice is: let go of the lead, let the dog run, much more familiar with the regulations than in the hope that it will outrun the cow, and any hiker is ever likely to be and, what’s thereby divert attention from the owner. more, will be motivated to comply with them, More fundamental still is the advice not to in that therein lies safety from prosecution. take a dog into that situation at all – ever.

My personal experience of bulls is that they The one other cattle-related Baby on Isle of Bute are more intent on snoozing, grazing, and circumstance which may cause alarm The modern hiker can be comforted dreaming of breeding encounters than with to hikers is young bullocks. These are stirring themselves at the sight of every the bovine equivalent of our unruly by the fact that there are rules passing biped. teenagers, with testosterone to spare and and regulations laid down for the A cattle-owner has, in addition to the undeveloped social manners. They like to guidance of cattle-owning farmers guidelines above, to be conscious of Health run around, let off energy, come up close & Safety regulations and of the “duty of and “mob” hikers. Shouting and waving of care” placed on him by the Occupiers’ Liability (Scotland) Act of 1960. arms can generally be relied on to turn them around, though they may This is somewhat balanced nowadays by the 2003 Land Reform Act’s come back and need the same treatment again. requirement that countryside users take responsibility for their own So, what recourse does a hiker have when approaching an area actions and decisions. The farmer also has to make decisions: for where cattle are present? I have found that, if in doubt at all, it is worth example, I was about to enter a field in Aberdeenshire some years ago, pausing at the field gate, rattling it if it is a metal one, and otherwise giving the cattle a good chance to register that one is there. Like us, they don’t like someone coming up silently and only suddenly appearing in their field of vision. It is usually possible, during those few minutes at the gate, to gain a pretty reliable impression of how the cattle are likely to react if one continues. If the hiker is still worried and really doesn’t want to enter the field AT ALL, then the Land Reform Act of 2003 comes to the rescue, in that it gives the public the right to enter any field, regardless of whether there is a right of way or not. So, one has the option of by-passing the cattle by using the next field.

Some cattle owners keep what are called “exotic breeds”, which do not fall within the guidelines mentioned above, but are subject to separate regulations, depending upon their known temperament and behaviour.

Turning to the specific matter of the Coastal Path, St Andrean hikers should be fair to the owner of the cattle and not assume that he is doing wrong or is putting an unnecessary impediment in their way. We are often told that modern urban residents have become separated from their rural roots, and perhaps this cattle-related apprehension is a product of that separation. Maybe we need to find again that understanding of, and tolerance of, matters rural.

To find out what Health & Safety have to say about all this, please read their webpage on: http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/ais17s.pdf Bull!

(Photos courtesy Brian Cairns)

25

OUT & ABOUT Tony Hardie’s

Nature Notes (Looking back to mid-summer)

Last year I wrote of everyone’s friend the robin: I mentioned the poets Keats and John Clare who had written of this garden bird in autumn.

I should have remembered that Bums recalls the “pensive Autumn cheer” of the robin in The Humble Petition of Bruar Water. Indeed in one verse he mentions the skylark, the goldfinch, the blackbird, the linnet, and the songthrush.

There has been reason to write of all these birds in these notes and Bums was, of course, right to suggest to the noble Duke that the waterside be planted with trees. Where there are trees, especially birch and alder, oak and ash, water, heather, and wild grasses, we have a natural habitat for birds, wild flowers, butterflies, and trout.

Dark green fritillary (courtesy Tony Hardie)

Every summer I find myself in those lovely birchwoods on the hillsides of Loch TummeI. I go to see one of our most beautiful butterflies, the dark green fritillary. It is reddish brown in colour, much the size of a tortoiseshell butterfly, covered with dark green markings, as if etched, on the upper wings, on the underside shades of green and silver which defy description, though the silver is like the mica that glints on a pebble in some Highland bum. On a sunny day in midsummer they can be seen on the wing from far off; the wild thyme is in flower and the beautiful Male linnet (by kind permission of John Anderson yellow rock rose, but it is the former that attracts (www.pbase.com/crail_birder)) them. Ringlets, Meadow Browns, the Scotch Argos, and Painted Ladies are all on the wing, one finds them among the whin, or the marran while in the wetter parts the marsh orchid is grass; so often in summer one sees these in flower. At dusk the red deer hinds and their families of finch-like birds flying together to and calves will come down to graze. This is land fro. The beauty of the male linnet is the dappled that has never seen a chemical, a herbicide, an crimson crown, forehead and breast with a insecticide, or a fungicide. No wonder it is such warm chestnut colouring over the back. But it is a sanctuary, and I have only touched on some not easy to see these colours; before one gets of the fauna and flora. There close he and his family take are no signposts, no footpaths. off, flying in great undulations Every summer I find The beguiling call of the to the next resting point – just myself in those lovely cuckoo is to be heard there, their version of the game of birchwoods on the though much diminished since hopscotch! The cock bird the days of May and early is a great songster with a hillsides of Loch TummeI June. Many of the groundsweet song containing lovely nesting meadow pipits, on the edge of the sharp high notes sung with gusto. To hear him birchwood, are busy feeding a young imposter is to be stopped in one’s tracks. No wonder it occupying their nest. Soon the cuckoo will go is a compliment to be told that one sings “like silent before an early return to Africa. a lintie”, or is it a suggestion that one never Two months ago I did not find space to stops? A bit of both I think. Just in case a reader write of the linnet. Those who walk the links and might think otherwise, I have never been the the West Sands will know this bird well. Here subject of such a compliment!

Gordon Jarvie

Air miles, flying south They were flying high, flying fast, flying noisy as they passed across the early-morning bustle of Crail’s high street.

We all stopped to look up and the little boy said, “What is it Dad?” Dad said, “It’s the geese, they’re on a mission.”

And we all kept looking up: the greengrocer outside his shop with a tray of soft fruit in his arms; an old lady getting carefully into her car; the minister precarious on his bike; a hassled, perspiring delivery man unloading crates from the Co-op van; youngsters dawdling schoolwards killing time, kicking a can . . .

while the racket of overhead debate flew on: “Come on, keep up, we’re late!”

Or, “Let’s fly a bit to left (or right).”

Or, “Who’s in charge of this flight?”

And then the geese were gone weaving south in sinuous skeins, focussed on far-off feeding grounds, leaving us standing. Wondering.

(Photo by kind permission of John Anderson (www.pbase.com/crail_birder))

26

OUT & ABOUT Fay Smith in praise of

Visiting Cambo Estate Little did Sir Peter Erskine’s grandmother imagine, as she put her eight children to work digging and replanting the acres of snowdrops in the woods on Cambo Estate, that these same snowdrops would form the basis of a year-round mail order business, and that it would be responsible for creating a new tourist season in February.

Throughout February and early March, thousands of visitors now visit the estate to enjoy the 70 acres of woodland walks which follow the Cambo burn as it meanders down to the sea, delighting in the magical display of snowdrops, snowflakes, and aconites carpeting its extensive banks.

Mischievous piglets add to the enjoyment, while at the end of an invigorating walk the tea room offers tasty homemade fare made

from local produce. The shop offers a spot of retail therapy, the plant sales area proves irresistible to gardeners looking for something interesting, or to visitors just wanting a few snowdrops to start their own snowdrop walk at home.

Daily snowdrop walks with a gardener take place each day offering the opportunity not only to admire, but also to learn a little about the collection of over 300 cultivars – which is to become the visitor centre for growing in the woodland garden. the gardens – and throughout the snowdrop Not content with creating this new visitor woodlands. attraction, Sir Peter’s wife Catherine has Lantern-making workshops for local added a totally new dimension to the snowdrop schools, with Jon Warnes, are being funded woodlands, transforming them by night with by a Fife Community Events Grant: these will light and sound into a magical wonderland. be used by children/visitors to Snowdrops by Run by their charity, Cambo Starlight. It is also hoped that Lizzie McDougal’s Insitute, and thanks to funding storytelling sessions (funded by Fife Locality from EventScotland, Fife Strategic Fund) will encourage the fairies to make an Events, and sponsorship from the appearance! (Lizzie has already helped children R&A, Snowdrops by Starlight will make fairy wishes at an Octoberfest held by take place this year Cambo Insitute last year.) each evening from All these activities, plus Snowdrops by Starlight 11 to 19 February. a visit on 4 March from will take place this An exhibition the Dark Skies team from year each evening of art and sculpture Edinburgh Observatory, as from 11 to 19 February by artists including well as workshops with Roddy Tracy Markey, Kate Mathieson and his portable Robertson, Katy Galbraith, Roddy furnace, provide plenty of reasons to banish Mathieson, Fanny Lam Christie, the winter blues with a visit to the snowdrops at and Margaret Bathgate will feature Cambo. in the magnificent old stable block (Photos courtesy Cambo Estate)

Invite you to visit a hidden treasure in the heart of St Andrews OPEN DAILY ALL YEAR ROUND

WINTER LECTURE PROGRAMMME Tuesday 10th January at 7.30pm Tuesday 7th February at 7.30pm Chemistry Building, North Haugh Entry Free – All Welcome TO JOIN THE FRIENDS AND SUPPORT THE GARDEN CONTACT MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY Tel: 01334 476452 Charity No. SC006432

27

regor Auctions g c a M 2012 Sale Dates January January February February March March April April May May May June June

– 12/13 – 26/27 – 9/10 – 23/24 – 8/9 – 22/23 – 5/6 – 19/20 – 3/4 – 17/18 – 31/June 1 – 14/15 – 28/29

July – 12/13 July – 26/27 August – 9/10 August – 23/24 September – 6/7 September – 20/21 October – 4/5 October – 18/19 November – 1/2 November – 15/16 November – 29/30 December – 13/14

Auctioneers & Valuators Est 1857 Tel: (01334) 472431 56 Largo Road, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 8RP.