Two very minor pieces of deco on Kirkcaldy High Street. I’ve never been inside either of them.

Above is a close-up of the building housing “Artistry” which as you can see now hosts a hairdressers’. I’ve no idea what it was originally. The windows can’t be original but I like the stepped roof. The street frontage is a typical modern glass and steel effort.

This is further along, beyond the pedestrianised part. As you can see this one hosts a cafe (which has been refurbished recently.) It has a nice wavy stepped frontage but seems to have been squeezed in between two others. Modern windows again. Curiously the cafe’s entrance is not from the High Street but rather up a side street and in round the back.

A little bit further along Victoria Road from the former Nairn and Williamson offices as you go towards the town centre is a fitness centre called Priory Park which has Art Deco features.

There are lots of horizontals and verticals, especially the chimney. The windows have been messed about with though so it looks a bit weird.

This shows the decidedly non-deco extension.

Between the Nairn and Williamson offices and Priory Park is Priory View.

There are some minor Art Deco features to this – or would be if the windows hadn’t been replaced. The building obviously needs some care and attention: starting with the missing roan pipes.

This ought to have been one of the earliest posts in this sequence as it is the major public building in the town, being a centre for local government. However for a long time it was festooned in scaffolding so it had to wait. This was taken in late November – of 2009. See if you can spot Santa’s sleigh!

I have paid my Council Tax in here many a time. (No longer as they force us to pay by direct debit now.) These later pictures were taken a few weeks ago. The entranceway is impressive.

This statue lies to the left of the entrance

The town crest appears twice on the building. Here, above the door on the South side.

Also in the stonework on the East side.

More photos can be seen on my Flickr site.

For what it’s worth I’ll be voting for a change to the alternative vote in the referendum tomorrow.

Not that I think it’s a perfect system, there isn’t one – and there’s not a snowball’s chance that anyone but Labour will win in my parliamentary constituency, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, anyway, under any system – but simply that it’s a (tiny) bit fairer than the so-called first past the post method which I have blogged about before.

[To see just how perverse the FPTP system can be see doctorvee’s excellent post on the subject here.]

I also see AV as an essential first step towards a more fully proportional election procedure. Consider: the coming of universal suffrage in the UK took nearly 100 years from the Great Reform Act of 1832 till women finally got the vote on the same terms as men – and one person one vote was not achieved (with the abolition of university seats) till after the Second World War!

If the AV referendum posts a no vote it will be taken to mean that, or represented as, there is not a wide desire to see a fairer system in place and the chances of any sort of PR system for UK parliamentary elections will thereby be lost for perhaps a generation, maybe even for my lifetime. Anyone who votes against it on the grounds that it isn’t the PR system they prefer is letting the worst (FPTP) take the place of the acceptable-for-now.

Yesterday the good lady and myself had a stroll along the Prom, prom, prom (as we do fairly often) and for the fifth day in a row the sea was wild. The previous days we had seen it only while walking to the High Street; enough to realise it was pretty rough. Thus forewarned, yesterday we took the camera.

It’s difficult to capture this fountain effect. The timing has to be right.

The sea’s pounding has caused a lot of the Prom’s paviors to come loose. This was a minor example of the holes left behind. Flotsam and jetsam are also everywhere.

Evasive action was required here!

Somehow or other a still photo doesn’t quite capture the moment.

Last night just before dusk we took a walk in the nearby park. (Got to try to get the lingering Christmas weight off somehow.)

Underneath one of the trees I spotted some snowdrops. It fair cheered me up.

Perhaps winter may be coming to an end.

We took a walk around a bit of the park on Saturday. Unlike last January when there was all sorts going on on the frozen pond the place was almost deserted apart from the seagulls and geese.

Even the play park, normally well used, was empty.

Here’s where the only evidence of free water was in January.

No convocation of birds this time. They were all (well some of them) up the other end.

Beveridge Park’s two resident swans are in this one. There has been a third swan on the pond for most of this year; we don’t know whether it’s the offspring of these two or a blow-in.

This is the fountain I pictured all iced up last year. It’s not quite so picturesque at the moment but from this angle you can see the building that used to be a park keeper’s house in the background.

We took another stroll along the Water of Leith yesterday and there was the heron again. (I assume it’s the same one we saw before.)

<center

It was quite undisturbed while we were going past, standing stock still, making the photo easier. It only moved up on to the bank after we were along the path a bit.

We browsed the book and charity shops in Stockbridge for a while but I came away empty handed. The good lady picked up two books to add to her to be read pile.

This time we came back via the town and so passed the Dene Bridge at the upper level.

There’s no idea from here of how high above the water the roadway is nor of the immensity of the pillars.

Later we dropped into the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art off Belford Road.

There are sculptures outside; including an unmistakable couple of Henry Moores.

One is at the front.

There is another beside the path which leads down from the car park to the Water of Leith.

Much of modern art leaves me cold but Moore’s sculptures are interesting.

Most of the stuff inside is a bit meh but the figurative paintings by the Scottish Colourists are an exception. (I’m used to these though as the excellent Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery has a fine collection of Peploes as well as some others.)

There were too some pictures by Alasdair Gray on exhibition in the Gallery to tie in with the newly published book of his art work, A Life In Pictures.

Largo Road is just on the eastern edge of Leven; on the A915, leading out towards Lundin Links (and later, Lower – and Upper – Largo, then St Andrews.)

In a similar way to Kirkcaldy’s Lady Nairn Avenue it has a fine row of 1930s houses, mostly semi-detacheds but in this case with some villas. Some of them have been reroofed but a few flat roofs remain. All these have replacement windows.

The pillars on the balconies here show the deco origins though the windows are now a fright.

This one still has trianguloid windows but they have been replaced (as have all the others) to the detriment of the overall appearance, I would say. The porch extension on the right hand semi is a bit odd looking too.

Here’s a detached villa with a deco-ish arch – still with eyes poked out, though.

Another detached villa, trianguloid windows above the door but the fenestration just isn’t right with plastic framed double glazing, and the roof overhang is odd. The garage can’t be original either, surely.

This has a very 30s chimney and a suspiciously new looking roof.

Plus a nice rounded corner. Untypically for Scotland, it’s finished in brick.

The past couple of weeks car windows in my street have had condensation on them when I left the house. This doesn’t usually happen in August.

This morning (1st Sep) bang on cue the first mist of the autumn was hanging around. I’d have called it a haar but it persisted all the way to Dunfermline; haar usually only lies close to the coast and Dunfermline tends to avoid it.

Whether this presages another bad winter like last year I don’t know. I do know it’s not usually so cold so early.

The tree at work I have mentioned before is showing its autumn colours again. Mind you, it wasn’t looking too green even in June.

Winter woollies, then.