It's always sunny in Fife

Yes it's true. Many a time I have looked from my office window in Edinburgh - straight out across the Forth - to see glorious sunshine. Whilst Edinburgh sits under a dark cloud, the Kingdom shows clear skies.

Yet again, here I am now in Perth, but as I head home south down the M90 every evening I look east, and the likelihood is that the clouds will be breaking and blue skies will be coming through.

I guess it makes sense. It's on the East coast, known to be far drier than the West. There are few hills of any size, and it's far enough south to be protected from the harsher North Sea climate coming from the Arctic, and surprisingly it's still in line with Denmark. I had expected it to be up around Oslo!

Anyway, Fife proves to be a blessing. When the rest of Scotland feels distinctly un-summery, drive east for half an hour and it's like living in the South East of England again. Last Saturday, whilst the rest of the country was somewhat gloomy, St. Andrews was hot hot hot! The beaches were packed, there was not a spare outside table to be had at a cafe or pub anywhere.

So what were my impressions of St Andrews? Elitist, snobbish, yes St Andrews is certainly those things. But, it has great people-watching potential, and many an hour can be lost wandering around town ; the town is one of the few in Scotland which seems untouched by bad 20th Century town planning, or by hurled houses and as with all of Fife, the seafood is to die for.

Of Blackberries

The old fashioned kind of course.

Still not able to identify the apple tree in our garden. Certainly the fruit has grown beyond the size of crab apples now, which means there are more recipe options when the forbidden fruit has ripened. But whether these are the cooking or eating kind remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I have noticed the other fruits in the garden. The blackberries in particular are in great supply, and I have managed to gather enough to make cooking some worthwhile. Not sure how long their season lasts, but looks as though there may be more on the way later. Hopefully some will coincide with the apples so I can cook them together. Have my eye on Blackberry, apple & cinnamon cupcakes particularly.

Tonight? Well after some quick research I found a recipe which I had all the ingredients for, and was suitably summer-y. Blackberry shortcake stacks. The original recipe made a large round double layer cake to be cut into individual slices, but I decided to make mine triple layered, and individually sized. Still too much for me though!

Worth also noting that I found a good website describing advice on picking wild blackberries. This included the dangers of picking berries near cows (!), and consideration to other people. Both irrelevant when the brambles are in your own unruly garden. But I did make sure to follow point 3 - leave enough for the birds to eat.

Interesting traffic warnings

I do love the Scottish Highways Agency. They are always so inventive with their warnings on the motorways. No 'Don't Drink and Drive' or other common pieces of advice, far more original.

Shall update this post as I see more, but today's was another classic:

'Can you rely on your spare tyre?'

A typical fringer?

Just spent the weekend in Edinburgh, enjoying the first weekend of the Fringe festival. Unlike last year, when as a Fringe-virgin I planned and booked tickets in advance, this year I simply turned up.

Found that a great way of spending the day was to try out the Free Fringe: well over 200 shows all through the day. Had a great deal of fun picking and choosing, and working out how to make best use of time. The shows themselves were surprisingly good, and I was more than happy to drop some 'beer money' into the pots at the end.

However, it all got me thinking what a typical fringe attendee was? As I looked around me, in the audience, in the Pleasance, on the Royal Mile, I wondered who had come to Edinburgh in the first place. Arts students? London journalists? International travellers?

Some statistics: around 400,000 people attend the fringe each year, around 1.8m tickets are sold. There are nearly 20,000 performers.

I wondered how many people showed up to Edinburgh from outside the UK without even knowing it was on. How many arty Londoners travel up for their summer every year? Are a lot of tickets sold to Fringe performers, who create a show simply to fund their trip to Edinburgh?

I have no answers. But this weekend I saw people from all over the world, heard accents and languages of all kinds spoken, and Edinburgh was basking in the glory of it all.