Parts of St Athernase date back to the twelfth century. It was undergoing renovation when we visited and it looked like a long project. It seems to have reopened in March this year.

Church from the gateway:-

That apse is a very distinctive feature.

From path:-

Close to:-

While we were looking round its grounds the incumbent Minister, a former RAF chaplain, came up to talk to us and invited us inside.

Ancient archway. Note large crack:-

Within the apse there are several carved heads which give the place a Viking feel:-

A lot of the stonework had apparently been hidden behind wooden panelling for a long time.

Stonework Detailing::-

Pictorial stonework:-

Figural stonework:-

Carved panel:-

Pittenweem is a fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife.

It has an annual Art Festival which we usually attend. While there last year I came upon this Art Deco/Moderne building, acting as one of the venues. Whatever it’s certainly 1930s.

View from behind. A garage is to the left here:-

The garage:-

Pittenweem Primary School is not quite Art Deco, being erected in 1912, but has some prefigurative elements:-

Left-side entrance to Pittenweem Primary School:-

Harper, 2010, 569 p. First published in 2003.

I probably wouldn’t have read this – I wasn’t particularly taken by the author’s The Wire in the Blood – but the good lady had just finished it and mentioned it was set partly in my old stomping ground of Kirkcaldy and partly in St Andrews (which I know well.) So I thought I’d give it a go. The locations in the book aren’t restricted to Fife, it does stray to Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, and even Seattle but the main events take place in what the locals like to call “the Kingdom.”

The prologue lets us know of a Fife Police press announcement of a cold case review and a shadowy figure haunting a cemetery before Part One plunges us into the 1978 discovery of the dying body of Rosie Duff by four students at St Andrews University (schoolfriends calling themselves the Lads Fi’ Kirkcaldy) taking a short cut back to their flat after a party. One of them is a medical student and tries to save her life but fails. As discoverers of the body and covered in blood they naturally become suspects. The investigation cannot summon up evidence even to charge them and the case is unresolved but they are still subjected to suspicion, threats and violence – especially by the dead girl’s brothers. McDermid makes a lot of this finger of suspicion and the effect it has on the four and their relationship(s). Part Two sees the resurrection of the case and its reintrusion into the four’s lives. But in the intervening twenty-five years the main evidence from the victim’s clothing has been lost and there seems little hope of progress. But the review has stirred the old suspicions and someone has the four firmly in the frame.

McDermid’s prose is certainly efficient but rarely rises above the workmanlike. The book’s structure, too, made it slightly odd. Part One was more or less scene setting, involved a lot of information dumping and therefore dragged somewhat. McDermid makes passing reference to the fascistic fringe and government encroachments on citizens’ rights in the late 1970s. (That sort of thing has become even worse of late with intolerance having been adopted into the political mainstream and governments eager to seize any excuse to restrict citizens’ rights.)

I would have said that it was cleverly executed except that the resolution was disappointing. It has more holes in it than Stoke City’s defence and depends too much on the prior withholding of information from the reader. In the last (tie-up) chapter it is revealed that one of the four Lads had a piece of information that would potentially have pointed to the murderer but never told the other three – nor the Police – during all those twenty-five years of suspicion. We can only suppose this was to create an artificial sense of suspense and it kind of obviates the point of the book (no matter what reason he might have had for his reticence.) Moreover the murderer seems to have been able to carry the body up a hill to where the Lads stumbled upon it without seemingly getting any blood on himself, even though the victim had a gaping wound.

McDermid has a wide readership. I assume they don’t like taxing their brains overmuch.

Pedant’s corner:- the main drag (St Andrews has a main drag?) Roger Waters’ (Waters’s. And I know he wrote Shine On You Crazy Diamond but did he sing on it? Wasn’t that David Gilmour?) “[Kirkcaldy’s] Town House looked like one of those less alluring products of Soviet architecture” (is more than a bit harsh. It’s a fine building.) Raith Rovers’ (Raith Rovers’s,) Brahms’ (Brahms’s,) “had strode” (stridden,) “‘Gonnae no dae that’” (is referred to as if it were a catchphrase from the early to mid 1970s. It wasn’t. Chewin’ the Fat, where it originated, was first aired in 1999.) “‘We lay low’” (we lie low – but it was in dialogue and the character had lived in the US for years and they can’t seem to get the lay/lie thing correct over there,) Soanes’ (Soanes’s.) “The sky was clear, a gibbous moon hanging low in the sky between the bridges.” (sky….sky,.) Sainsburys (Sainsbury’s.) Plus several instances of “time interval later”.

The village green, called the Bow Butts, taken from the site of the Bannockburn Monument:-

Ceres old bridge, from the car park:-

Ceres Burn from the old bridge:-

A folly (to the left of the bridge, above):-

Ceres is a village in central Fife.

The monument was erected on the six-hundredth anniversary of Scotland’s most famous victory in battle, at Bannockburn in 1314, to commemorate the men of Ceres who fought in it. It’s situated by the side of the “Bow Butts” as Ceres’s village green is called.

Ceres holds a Highland Games every year. It is said to have hosted a games every year since 1314 after Robert the Bruce granted permission in commemoration of the village men’s contribution to his victory.

Bannockburn Monument, Ceres:-

Inscription:-

Stitch of two photos to get the whole rainbow in. It’s actually a double rainbow.

We got fairly well acquainted with Rosyth, a Fife town on the Firth of Forth west of but very close to the Forth Bridges, when we were house-hunting. We opted for elsewhere in the end.

Rosyth is most famous for its Naval Dockyard but is home to some deco.

The Clydesdale Bank building, on Queensferry Road, has an Art Deco frontage, at least in its older aspect, built 1932:-

This modern addition (to the left of photo above) isn’t though:-

The former Palace Cinema, also on Queensferry Road, from left.

Palace Cinema from right:-

Shop with slightly edged flat roof on Admiralty Road. Windows replaced.

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:-

Fife Council has decided to go ahead with the closure of sixteen libraries in the county. This includes three of those closest to me and which I use regularly.

(I note in the newspaper article in the first link above the occurence of the spelling calamatous. Did the author by any chance mean calamitous? Did no one in an editorial capacity notice?)

Despite the campaign against the closures and my efforts at borrowing books this year to attempt to keep the numbers up Fife councillors yesterday opted to close all 16 of the libraries that were under threat. That of course includes the two which I use most frequently.

How soon before more are shut down?