Scottish smiles

Fife holiday 2026 #16

There were many times on our holiday when I had to stop and smile. We were just passing a rather grimy window when this cat popped his head through the blinds - boo! Judging by the rather mangled blinds, it seems it's a regular trick of his. 

Meanwhile in Kirkcaldy we spotted a Wemyss Ware cat. Wemyss Ware was a famous Kirkcaldy pottery, opened in 1882, that made (among other things) decorative cats. They are being celebrated by a sculpture trial around the town. 

For some reason the sign below amused me. I never think of harbours as having gates - and it also reminded me of that famous 'Sun' headline from the 1992 General Election: 'Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights'.

The 'Beach Library' was, I thought, a genius idea: lots of sand toys to borrow. We have little free book libraries round here but I'd never seen a beach library before. 

I noticed quite a few food-related things. There's an ongoing joke that haggis are small, elusive animals that live in the Highlands. Because of the steep terrain, they supposedly have two shorter legs on one side so they can only run around the mountains in one direction. If a hunter wants to catch one, they simply wait for it to stop and try to turn around. Because it can only run in one direction, it gets confused and tumbles right down the mountain.

Scotland's pride in having a team in the football World Cup was plain for all to see. 'No Scotland, no party'! 

And tattie soup (sometimes with neeps) - potatoes and turnips. 

St Andrews' hotels have long welcomed golfers and this well-polished brass sign assures them they don't even have to take off their shoes. 

We first met Oor Wullie, a famous Scottish cartoon character, in Edinburgh last year, if you remember. In St Andrews, in a sculpture by Matt Low, he wears the red undergraduate gown and a crown... perhaps representing a famous former student of the university called William... 

And finally, a stone on a building called a Mort-house in Crail churchyard: 'Erected for Securing the Dead', with a date of 1826. These buildings were necessary because of the widespread practice of grave-robbing, where newly-deceased bodies were dug up and sold to anatomists for study. The bodies were stored securely until they had decomposed enough to be of no use for research.