It is a grand place to be if you can abide the cold - you'll come South for Christmas and wonder why everyone is wearing an overcoat when it is so mild - and the hordes of Beatrices and Benedicts doing anthropology or other harmless degrees prior to ascending to a position in Daddy's Bank or somesuch. (No talk there of 'loo vs. toilet'. One either has a 'gud shite' or one says nothing.)
Locals were largely tolerant of these generally fairly toffee-chinned English invaders, though it did not do to be much out on Burns Night if you could not pass for a convincing Scotsman. ('Air Hair Lair' might work for a greeting most days of the year, but not then.)
Golf is not a must, but if it is your idea of not spoiling a good walk then there is no better place on God's earth to play the game. Conquer the 17th and you are a man for all seasons.
Not that we - certainly not all - were actually at the University itself, rather just living in villages on the Firth of Forth some ten or so miles from the place. Some were 'up' - Cyril the atheist studying theology - and around them gathered a loose federation of people for whom soft Southern living was just too unchallenging.
Not quite survivalism, but then again not that far from. Out of any mainstream one could think of - conventional or not - encamped in rooms or cottages (ours most splendidly by the Cellardyke harbour) we would by and large have been content for known civilisation to have vanished altogether: a Southern irrelevancy in our Northern fastness.
Trips to the town itself were infrequent. Winter days and nights - cold, loud and raw - cottage, pub, harbour wall to watch the mast lights of the returning fishing fleet, little else was needed.
It could have been Hallowe'en though possibly St. Valentine's night - either works - we would trip to The Pends, the gates to St Andrews old monastery.
The legend was thus: a local pretty maid, a great beauty, had been promised marriage by a laird's son. He though decided to drop her for not being quite good enough. In despair she slashed her lovely face with briers - if he would not have her then no other would.
Soon dying of grief her ghost would wander the grounds of the monastery, lamp in her outstretched hand, her ravaged face veiled. Men spotting from afar the approaching lone woman and wondering how to seduce her would be drawn towards the mysterious, alluring figure.
As they approached close she would lift her veil revealing by lamplight the ghastly wreck of her face. The men would flee in terror never to dare to look at another woman.
Our Kate is made of sterner stuff of course.
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