One of Fife’s finest, Stuart Adamson, was the founding force behind the band Big Country.

He attended one of the schools I taught in Beath High School (but I think before my time there) and at least one his children was a pupil at the other, Queen Anne High School in Dunfermline.

Big Country’s skirling guitar sound was intended to invoke its members’ Scottish heritage as heard in this song. The clip seems to be a live version as performed on The Tube.

Big Country: In a Big Country

We quite often go into Dunfermline.

Late last October the town (Sorry, it’s a city now) was festooned with poppies in the run-up to Remembrance Day.

Carnegie Library, Abbot Street:-

Lower High Street:-

Carnegie Drive:-

On main roundabout

Appin Crescent:-

None of the last tfour photographs was taken by the driver!

It’s mostly the Queensferry Crossing, not the two older bridges, you can see in this photo. (The white sail-shaped objects in the distance are the bridge’s cable stays.)

Looking the other way from the garden area there is a view of and Dunfermline Abbey and, to the left, the remains of Dunfermline Palace:-

Dunfermline Palace:-

19^th century industrialist and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Fife.

His birthplace is now a museum:-

As the plaque on the cottage indicates, Carnegie became a noted philanthropist, endowing Dunfermline with a swinmming pool and over 3,000 towns worldwide with libraries. One of these was Dunfermline Library whose later extension I posted about yesterday.

In the museum I came across a drawing of another of these, Coldside Library in Dundee, and recognised it immediately:-

I have previously mentioned this fine building but at the time did not know it had anything to do with Carnegie, nor indeed its name.

The library is at the moment being refurbished. Its entrance is on Maygate but this view is of the St Margaret Street aspect:-

Detail:-

From south:-

This is in the upper part of Bruce Street. The deco is mainly the “marble” cladding but there’s a kind of “rule of three” in the detailing lines:-

In the lower part of Bruce Street opposite Dunfermline Abbey lies Life. Both photos taken from the Abbey grounds:-

The cartouche says 1907 but that curved window wall and the glass bricks are deco features.

Cairneyhill is a village in the west of Fife, between Dunfermline and Kincardine

These flat-roofed houses have a touch of deco to them especialy the stepping on the roofline.

From main road:-

From access road:-

Giacomo’s is a café/baker’s shop in Cross Wynd. As the street name suggests it is rather a narrow thoroughfare. That made it very difficult to get a photograph. In addition these were taken in the depths of winter as light was fading. It’s the rounded bay and the windows which are the most deco features but the glazing is not original.

From the lower part of Cross Wynd:-

From the upper part of Cross Wynd:-

This building is at the junction of St Margaret Street and Buchanan Street. Its roofline and decoration around and above the door mark its deco influences.

The first photo is from May 2010:-

Sadly the shop is now empty and forlorn looking. This is from a week or so ago:-

Hurricane Films, Iris Productions, SellOutPictures. Directed by Terence Davies.

We don’t go to the cinema much, life and children got in the way not to mention Kirkcaldy’s dedicated cinema closing down years ago now so we had only what passes for the local “Art House” Cinema to rely on unless we wanted a trek to Dunfermline.

However we couldn’t miss seeing the film of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic book Sunset Song. So it was off to the Adam Smith Theatre again. (But that’s also a longer trip since our house move.)

It is difficult for a film to capture the essence of Gibbon’s masterpiece. I suppose this one made a valiant effort but I have huge reservations. The human story of Chris Guthrie’s life was well enough done but though references to it were made via voice-over (and in the odd bit of dialogue) and there were cutaways to sumptuous views of the countryside the importance of the land to the novel (and Gibbon’s intentions for it) did not come across with anything like enough force.

I noticed that the church used – at least for the exterior shots – was actually the one in Arbuthnott (the village with which Gibbon is most associated) where his memorial is situated. I can’t vouch for the interior as I’ve never been inside. I did feel that the soundtrack choir singing All in the April Evening in the lead-up to the church scene was ill-judged; too lush by far. We also had the minister wearing a surplice; not at all likely in a Presbyterian Kirk. And that pulpit looked disturbingly modern.

Peter Mullan as Chris’s father gave his usual Peter Mullan hardman performance and Agyness Dein’s acting as Chris was fine but really her accent was all over the place. At one point I thought she’d said, “they were burning the winds,” when it was whins. (The h in “wh” words is aspirated in Scots and Scottish English; the sound is more like hwins.) She also pronounced the g in “rang” and for her to be unable to say “loch” properly verges on the criminal for someone playing a Scotswoman. None of the accents struck me as being particularly of the Mearns though.

I also felt the prominence given to Chris’s husband Ewan’s fate towards the end of the film made it seem more of a lament for the fallen of the Great War in general rather than the more particular loss about which Gibbon was writing, for which Ewan stood as a metaphor.

Watch the film by all means – it says a lot about the harsh times and attitudes of the Scotland of a century ago – but for the full Gibbon experience the book is certainly to be preferred.