Variations On A Theme, Opus 97 By B. Ully (1980 - 2016)

Bullying comes in all shapes and sizes, much like the people to whom it's directed. It comes in many different forms ranging from emotional to physical, and no matter which type you come across in your life (because I suspect that most people have experienced bullying in one form or another) it leaves a mark.

The belief that fat is a shameful and uglyfying contagious disease is prevalent in our society. We see it in the tabloids and on the streets every day. People continue to behave like they can pick up a stigma-tastic fat virus by breathing the same air as someone who is larger than they are, and that somehow it's possible to be considered as undesirable, as unpopular, or be as bullied as a bigger person if you hang out with, like, or even (gods forbid) find them attractive. And I'm not talking about the reasons why a person is fat here (for there will be as many different reasons as there are people who are large), but simply about the social dishonour of being ‘different'.

I find that in itself to be very telling: that the modern human psyche is somehow letting it be known that bigger people get treated like crap, and no-one wants to be treated like crap if they can help it. No-one wants people to think that they are deficient on some mental scale for liking a bigger person, so instead of an empathetic response of kindness, inclusion, acceptance, the knee-jerk reaction is one of avoidance, exclusion, and, in more extreme cases, physical bullying. Bullying perhaps just to prove that you're really, really having nothing positive to do with a fat person in any shape or form, just in case the fat cooties attack you, too.

I was reminded the other day* of an incident earlier in my life where I was advised to seriously contemplate having a relationship with someone because he was the only person they knew of who liked fat girls, regardless of my own feelings (or lack thereof) for the guy. The implication being that they** thought a) he was a rare thing, in a strange fetish fashion, and b) I wouldn't find anyone else, so settling for him was the only thing to do if I didn't want to remain single for the rest of my fat, unlovable life. I'm paraphrasing, thankfully, but behind the ‘you seem so nice, you deserve to be loved even if we consider the potential him to be weird to do so' was a theme that has been a recurrent one since the time I discovered boys. And in varying degrees of platonic friendship from even earlier days.

My own experience of being bullied isn't unusual. It began when I was around eight years old. Before that I don't remember being made to feel I was different or not worthy of inclusion, but it was a tiny primary school, so once the kids reached an age to notice differences amongst ourselves, there was no place to hide.

Why was I bullied? I'm presuming it was because I was plump and looked different from everyone else. It's certainly the only things I was ever teased about. (Well, I was called ‘Duracell' a couple of times ‟with the copper-coloured top" but being a red-head was never anything I was teased with more than once or twice.) I was big little thing from day one; slightly premature and underweight (oh the irony) but broad-shouldered and compact none-the-less. I turned into a shy, chubby, emotionally-tangled hermit, (I'd go into ‘huff's, as they were called, when I didn't understand what was happening around me) and looking back I suspect that because I didn't understand why I was being picked on quite so much, it probably didn't help matters much once I became known for being a loner further up the school system.

My best friend back then was the polar opposite to me, skinny, a bit spoilt (partly because she was an only child, partly because she was from a troubled home and her parents were probably trying to cover things up with material things) but a kind friend to me until she started to be bullied because she was my friend when we were maybe ten or eleven. I never condemned her for her decision to choose not being bullied over being my friend even at the time, although I remember the sense of abandonment.

I wrote an essay in my first year English class at secondary school about being bullied, being careful not to name names as I was still being targeted by the same people, who were, incidentally, in the same classes as me at the ‘big school'. As a piece of prose it got a good mark (write about what you know...), and because of that the teacher read it out to the class, after which the bullying instigator from primary school came up to me in tears to apologise, not realising how much being bullied had affected me, yet somehow realising that she was the bully ringleader about whom I had written. I don't remember my reaction (probably embarrassment), but I do remember she was never so bold in her taunts afterwards, and instead I seemed to disappear from her radar, and therefore most of my primary school acquaintances' radar. Mostly a good thing, I think.

I spent much of my secondary school career by myself. From the tenor of the teasing and insults tossed at me on a daily basis I have to presume again it was because I was by this time quite overweight, partly in thanks to a heady cocktail of big genes and a knee condition which stopped all sports and movement almost in their tracks when I was thirteen. (I've written about this elsewhere on the blog - Osgood-Schlatter disease. Then: a debilitating knee condition that could turn a sporty, ballet-mad youngster into a decrepit old person almost overnight; now: something that can be handled with drugs and physiotherapy.) And again, a loner known to be a loner is left alone to be that loner. A meta loner, if you will.

The guys I crushed on were the objects of pity and potential tease-target themselves because of it, and I learned that my affections were to be abhorred and shunned, that I was not worthy, and that anyone who did actually like me would probably be emotionally deficient. The people I had to sit next to in class were sometimes subject to ridicule because, ugh, who wants to sit with the fat girl. So I learned to find seats by myself at the back of the class where no-one could see me and where I couldn't bother anyone. I stopped eating lunch in the canteen because I was so ashamed and embarrassed to be sitting by myself every day, and being subject to sniggers and jibes, (I started putting on extra weight because the dinner ladies felt sorry for me sitting on my own and piled my plate up every day to ‘make up for it', and I'd comfort myself in the food***) so instead took packed lunches to school, eating them in the locker room by myself, then eventually taking my sandwiches down to the beach, far away from school environment, and I learned that it was better to be lonely than be surrounded by people who made me feel like I was less than human.

Ironically the only other overweight girl in my year was my biggest tormentor. Pun not intended. She was sporty, strong, large, and tall; a giant who would physically push me around if we met up in the corridors or in the locker room. Hindsight suggests that the choice (in this context) for the fat girl at school was either to be the bully or be the bullied, and she obviously chose the former before the latter could put a choke-hold on her life. Compassionate retrospect aside, she is one of the few people on earth who I would not deign to spit on if she was on fire, even now, thirty years later, for it was her behaviour that was the catalyst in making my secondary school life a thousand times more painful, heart-breaking, and awful than primary school ever was. Where she led, others followed, either by example, or by avoiding me, and a lot of the emotional scars continue to lurk just under the surface.

Although yes, since school, instances of bullying haven't been as physical, but comments continue to fly from uncaring, uneducated lips, ranging between sneers and sniggers from passers-by in the street, a memorable account of a stranger, an especially rude bitch, poking me in the stomach in M&S telling me I didn't need to buy sausages, to being told more than once that I didn't get an operatic part because although I was vocally a shoo-in, I wouldn't fit in to either the director's visualisation of the opera, or the already-designed costume. And everything in between, whether from strangers with ill-intent, or from friends who ‘only have my best interests at heart'.

Current psychotherapy appears to be going along the lines of ‘what happened before has no bearing on the now', concentrating more on current feelings and thought processes, but you can't tell me that decades of rejection, being laughed at, and being made to feel less than human doesn't contribute something to how one feels about one's self, how we expect to be treated by others, and what we expect to be given in terms of affection throughout the rest of our lives.

But let me get this straight - I've not written this for sympathy; I neither need nor want any. Nor do I seek personal attention. I just want to add my voice to the myriad others who are trying to bring attention to the subject at hand, whether it be bulling by fat-shaming, disability-shaming, gender-shaming, race-shaming... In this context I don't care about the reasons why a bully bullies; in the end such perpetrator-coddling begins to sound like nothing more than victim-shaming. The ‘they beat you up, physically, emotionally, but that's because really they're sad, going through some ‘stuff', or is angry at themselves right now and therefore shouldn't be condemned, told off, or made to be responsible for their actions, but instead they should be cosseted, cared-for, and understood' argument holds no water when faced with the realities of being on the receiving end of their ‘bad day', and told we ‘probably deserved it, anyway, fatso'.

Is there a solution to the bullying question? Well, yes. Taking a moment to think before you speak or act might be a step in the right direction. Not openly sneering at someone who doesn't fit in with your own particular brand of ‘normal' might be another. Not judging someone by their appearance. Maybe trying to be less prejudiced and more embracing of human diversity. Then teaching your kids by example.

They sound so obvious, patronising even, but these tiny things can make the biggest difference to someone who's used to running the gamut of insults on their person every day. But I can't force people to change their discriminatory actions towards others; it's hard enough stopping myself from giving (or, more realistically, thinking about after the fact) retaliatory insults, or making my own snap judgements about a person, to try and change the world one twat at a time (I can change myself, though), but the first day I walk about in public and not receive any vocalisation of distaste or disdain will be an interesting one, I think.

* “You don't like being single - have you tried internet dating? There are sites especially for guys looking for bigger girls."

** It's fair to say that these weren't close friends telling me how to live my life, because my true friends, at least, don't insult me to my face, sugar-coated or not.
*** Beef olives, chips and gravy. mmm For all the possible connotations it may have to crap times at school, it remains a comfort favourite. Not all memories are bad, I guess...

Spice Up Your Life

Apple sauce is ubiquitous in the Netherlands; a veritable staple of Dutch ‘cuisine'. There are a couple of types I see on supermarket shelves (although many different brands... shelves and shelves of the stuff, metres long, reaching from the floor to the ceiling) - the first being what I call the baby food apple sauce - pure mush - and the second being a more robust, chunky pulp-like consistency. Toddler, as opposed to baby food. I buy a jar from time to time, usually because it's on offer, and I like to pretend that I'd actually use it to cook with rather than end up just eating it from the jar with a big spoon. You will be unsurprised to learn that I have ended up eating it from a jar with a big spoon every time. Until now.

I had read somewhere, probably on Pinterest, that apple sauce could be used in baking as a replacement for something. Eggs. Or perhaps butter. To be honest, I have yet to find a recipe (although my search to date has only included cookies and cakes) that doesn't also include both eggs and butter along with the apple sauce, so I may need to open up my research a little wider. Perhaps to scones and pancakes...

But I did come across this little gem:

Applesauce Oatmeal Cookies from Six Sisters' Stuff

You need:

1 cup or 255g apple-sauce (Baby, not toddler version)

1 cup or 250g brown sugar (I used dark brown)

1 egg
½ cup or 120g butter, softened

2 cups or 244g GF flour

1 cup or 90g GF oatmeal

1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground cloves (I used 2 tsps of speculaas spices instead of the 3 different spices mentioned in the recipe, because the smell is just heavenly!)

1 cup or 175g chocolate chips (optional)

Excuse me, though - I need to recover from reading the parenthetical option of adding chocolate chips to the recipe. Optional choc chips: surely an oxymoron. :: looks at photo above :: Hmm, interesting. It appears the only moron here is me.

There are only 2 paragraphs to the directions. Or really, one paragraph and one sentence. I was so taken aback by this simplicity that I decided to preheat my oven to 190C (375F) right at the beginning when I was asked. Brevity moves us in mysterious ways.

You're asked to mix together the apple-sauce, the brown sugar, the butter and the egg. That's it. Mix together. No ‘use a marble bowl made from stone that can only be found in one rocky outcrop of the Andes'. No ‘using a wooden spoon that has been handled for no less than four generations of baking women in your family'. Which may possibly be why this happened:

I used a hand-mixer first, but El-Cheapo model that it is, it merely chopped the softened butter into teeny-tiny pieces, refusing to, you know, actually mix the ingredients together. Even my trusty wooden spoon (one generation old) wasn't capable of remedying the situation, so I just had to hope that somehow everything would come right when I added all the dry ingredients (excluding the choc chips). Or, at worst, the problem would be well hidden amongst the oats and flour.

What you can't see can't hurt you, right? The dough should be firm, we're told, so adding more flour may be an option if somehow your consistency is a little... off. After folding in the choc chips (notice it's written plain and simple in the directions. None of your namby-pamby ‘optional' here) you are invited to scoop heaping tablespoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet, and bake for 13 to 15 minutes until golden.

Let me say here that this mixture is thick and really keeps its form well. I mean really keeps its form... I made three sheet-worths of cookies. The first, as seen above, had your plain ol' spoonfuls dolloped onto the tray. They came out looking much the same shape as they went in. Cookie dollops. The second tray contained artful 'squished down by a fork' morsels, that also came out looking pretty much as they went in.

I was nearing the top of a not-so-steep learning curve by the third tray, and not only did I artfully squish the cookies with a fork, but also neatened them up a little around the edges. 

A little.

goldilocks cookies: dollops, squished, and just right

Just to let you know, this quantity of dough gives you a metric sh*t-ton of cookies. which is roughly three dozen cookies in layman's terms. They're not crunchy cookies by any means, perhaps the legacy of the apple-sauce? but they're tasty, moreish, and spice-alicious, for all that. 

The Last Bluebells

I had to go back.

It wasn't over.

I knew they'd still be there,
Waiting for me,
Those that were left.

Awaiting my arrival with a longing
To have their last moments in the light acknowledged.
To capture a testament to their grace,
A proof of their existence,
Though it had been for only a few fleeting weeks.

And there they were,
Those final fading beauties;
Using up the very last of their being 

To be glimpsed
Through the new and the strong,
The fresh and the bright,

Before a final oblivion of thorn and shade.

They are not lost,

Those few that lingered,

They are not forgotten,

For in their beauty they will be remembered,

While their image remains.

And long after

They will be waiting for me,

In my dreams.

For it wasn't over.

I had to go back.

The Last Bluebells

© Nicola Wemyss 

23rd May 2015

(reblogged from the 23rd of May 2015)

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I will always be the first to let you know that cooking and I are not the closest of friends; au contraire, we are mere nodding acquaintances at best. The Fake Food Blogger™ in me does like to give things a go now and again, just to see whether my doing (there is no try, according to Yoda) has actually improved not just the finished product, but the actual creative process, too, practice making perfect, and all that.

That being said, my cooking and baking ‘research' to date hasn't really given me much in the way of empirical evidence pointing to any significant improvement, unless you count and compare my very first attempt at GF baking (an unmitigated disaster That Which Must Not Be Named) to my last effort - Lemon Meltaway Cookies (a triumph in the face of icing sugar adversity) - but I think it's fair to say that although my learning curve may still be a tad on the horizontal side, I will endeavour to keep trying doing. 

For science.

Triple Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies from Nigella.com (And the Simply Nigella series)

The first thing I noticed about the recipe was that it was written in a charmingly vernacular style. Well, in the charming vernacular style of Nigella Lawson. You'll know by now that badly written anything grinds my gears, as Peter Griffin is wont to say, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it sounding in my head just as if Nigella herself was giving me her instructions. That in itself may be due to the script writer for her programme perhaps also being the person in charge of writing the prose for her website and books, a PR dream-come-true in respects to product management, or it might just be that Nigella is really like her on-screen persona and it's her dictation that becomes everything we hear and read. I'd quite like to think that if we were to partake of a glass of wine in her kitchen while she puttered about making something yummy, it would sound exactly like what we see on screen, be it TV or monitor. Then again, I might just be falling for yet another marketing ploy, but I'm happy to take a tumble in this instance!

So, you need:

150g dark chocolate chips

125g dark chocolate

125g buckwheat flour

25g cocoa (sieved)

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

60g unsalted butter

125g soft dark brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste (or extract)

2 large eggs (fridge cold)

Your first instruction is to ‘clatter' the chocolate chips on a dish and place them in the fridge (on the assumption that the colder they are when finally added to the mixture, the more the chance they'll retain their semblance of chocolate chip-ness once baked.) Fair enough. I'm already sufficiently charmed by the language that I'd probably do anything she asked further down the recipe, whether it was cookie-related or not...

And because it wasn't the first thing she asked us to do, I was happy to pre-heat my wee oven to 180 degrees and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. You can see how far under Nigella's spell I've already fallen... Or you can see how contrary I can be... Take your pick.

You're then asked to break up the chocolate bar into chunks and melt it either in the microwave, or in a bain-marie. I chose the former, and easier option.

Well, I say easier option, but it's not idiot-proof. A wee word of advice: don't presume that just because the first minute hasn't been sufficient to melt the chocolate, that a second won't set the whole thing on fire. That I'm speaking here from experience will only confirm my relationship with the cooking Gods. I pray I won't reduce my kitchen to ashes; they ignore my pleas. I'm beginning to suspect that they don't accept burnt offerings.

Once you've managed to fan most of the smoke out of the kitchen window, you can add the buckwheat flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt to a bowl, and give them a good mix, then in another bowl cream the sugar, butter, and vanilla extract together until it's ‘a caramel colour, and fluffy' whatever that means. Mine was not in any way whatsoever fluffy. It was creamed, but I suspect more in the sense of having been beaten up by a bully, than in any way baking related...

You then mix in the slightly cooled-down chocolate to the creamed sugar and butter, (or however much runny stuff you've managed to salvage from the fiery ball of chocolate hell) and then add the eggs one-by-one. Once everything is nicely combined, you can add the dry ingredients, finishing off by folding in the chilled chocolate chips.

You're then asked to ‘dollop' tablespoons of the dough onto the lined baking sheets (ah, she's talking my particular type of cooking language) although I made smaller cookies using heaped teaspoonfuls of the dough, because no matter how I try I can't just have one cookie, and making them smaller means that a) I'm not eating the same calories by partaking of a couple of mouthfuls of cookie bliss than I am if I were to pig-out out on two dinner-plate cookies, and b) technically they'll last longer because I get on average around thirty or so cookies per recipe. (I say technically, but I really mean in theory. What can I say, sometimes a girl needs a little cookie therapy.)

Once dolloped, bake them in the oven for nine to ten minutes, bringing them out when they are just getting set at the edges but still soft to the touch and looking undercooked elsewhere. (I reckon if you're wanting a more flat biscuit cookie than the soft squishy version of this recipe, you can add a minute or two to the baking time.)

Once they're out, you leave them on the baking sheet for another ten minutes before transferring them to a rack to finish cooling completely.

Then NOM, because these babies are squishy chocolatey heaven!

Nice one, Nigella! Your Simply series may have been panned, but you still inspire the naughty cookie baker in all of us. Or at least me. Mmm, cookies...

Cliff Notes

It was altogether a different kind of day when last I took a walk along St Andrews pier. I took a photo on the occasion before this from the end of the pier looking into town that I think may be one of my all-time favourites, but alas, alack, it's on the hard-drive of my now defunct tower PC to which access is now... limited...  (Ah, the classic use of understatement that you'll only find with the British use of English!) Don't get me wrong, though; I did, of course, splash a version of it all over the book of face (and, come to think of it, there's a post further back here somewhere that has it, too), but I'm loathed to download that version because the quality won't anywhere near the original, and I think I may be a pedant about such things. (If this comes as a shock, then you're obviously new to the blog. Welcome!)

It was a different day indeed - the sun was shining, and although it was still rather on the chilly side being April in Scotland and all, the view was still breathtaking! 

Of course, my contrary self appears to find the rugged, storm-shrouded views taken from the same place to be more aesthetically pleasing, but it's good to remind the world-at-large (all four of you) that Scotland does indeed enjoy blue skies. Occasionally.

Yes, yes, those clouds in the background are rain clouds beginning to roll in from the west, but what can I say? All sun and no rain makes Scotland a dull... wait, this needs more thought...

The similarity between this walk and the one in November (not including the obvious pier stop-off) is that I gained another first, for from the pier we (my sister and I) followed the East Sands and started on the Kinkell Braes coastal walk, one on which I'd never set foot before. (Or, in the spirit of honesty, one I'd never set foot on before because it starts off with a steep climb from the shoreline up onto the cliff tops, and well... big girl, steep climbs, cliff-top pathways with rocky outcrops below felt somehow oxymoronic.)

Kinkell is marked on the map by a static caravan park, which, fair play to them, has been there for decades, but the walk itself runs for miles down the coast, and was originally part of the massive Kinkell estate to the west of St Andrews, where, even until the 19th century, you could find some remains of the chapel, hospital, castle and dovecote that were recorded to exist on the estate in the Middle Ages.

The views were stupendous, and the view of the town, East Sands, and pier, photogenic even at the worst of times (and I'd post that photo of the stormy pier here if I could get my hands on it...) changed, and didn't change with every step. This is the point where you can thank your lucky stars that my camera isn't equipped with any decent kind of zoom-lens, because I'd have happily taken the photo equivalent of a flip-book of the journey along the cliff-top, and splurged them all over this post had it been at all feasible!

Still, I'll give you one fuzzy effort, to help you realise just how lucky you truly are...:

A mile or two along the cliff, you start to notice an enormous monument-like stone jutting out from the shoreline, and careful walking down some ancient stone steps from the top of the cliff to the shoreline reveals the Maiden Rock staring out to sea in all her weathered glory.

Further on down the coast at the natural inlet called Kinkell Harbour stands the Rock and Spindle, part of an eroded volcanic plug, but we never got that far because the path that became a little too muddy and a little too close to the edge of the cliff for our Sunday afternoon walking attire. But despair ye not (because I tell you are indeed despairing), as it's on the To Be Discovered list, next time I'm home!

Muscle Amnesia

“Nic continues to mistakenly believe that, just because she studied ballet for 10 years before a knee condition stripped her of athletic ability at 13, any cardio-ballet workout will be a doddle, somehow forgetting that thirty years have passed with nary a plié nor arabesque to be seen.

#iHurt #KneesStillDontWork #UglyDucklingPuddle"

Yes, in a way it's just like riding a bicycle - once you know how to do it, you don't really forget. Muscle memory is a powerful tool in many respects, but muscle memory is not, repeat: is NOT the same as constantly putting those muscles to use over a long period of time. Anyone who's just ridden a bike for the first time in twenty years will tell you they're a bit wobbly at first, but then their subconscious and sense of balance will kick in, and they'll be pretending they're on their old BMX/Raleigh Racer in next-to-no time. Then they'll tell you the next day that they can't walk because their thigh muscles will have decided to shorten to half their original length, and that they're being haunted by the ghoulish pressure of a too-small, too-hard saddle between their cheeks, and can't actually sit down.

Yes, remembering the mechanics of how to do something you used to do a long time ago is so very much not the same as actually having done it continually over the years...

First position? Pff, please you don't have to remind me what that is!! Wait, I can't get my heels to touch because my calves are getting in the way... Hang on, let me really push them... Um, I don't remember my Achilles tendon twanging so much before, that can't be normal.

Second position grande plié. Ah, that should be fine. It's like a sumo squat without the pain. I SAID WITHOUT THE PAIN! Ah yes, my knees still don't work, but I'm sure that using my knee-supporting muscles, whichever ones they are, it'll be fine. Knees are supposed to grind and pop nowadays, aren't they? Add a port-de-bras first to fifth (holding a cardio ball) while you're dipping, and back again? Ok, but I'm not sure my core appreciates that its day off has been cancelled. There's a lot of internal moaning going on... More than usual, anyway.

Split-squats opening out into a low arabesque... I.. Oof. I seem to be too over-encumbered with booty to raise my leg more than a foot off the ground behind me.

I cracked open an old book of Haydn sonatas the other week, not having looked at it for years. Possibly even fifteen years. It lives sandwiched between my vocal scores, with some other piano music from That Time Before Singing, but I spotted the blue ABRSM cover and was overcome by a fit of nostalgia, opened it at an old favourite and sat down to play. Needless to say my actual piano technique has been shot to hell after being neglected for so long, but even though I stumbled a bit, my fingers, on the whole, remembered where to go. After a decade and a half! Then I felt my tendons in my lower arms twitch, and after half an hour of pretending to be Maria João Pires I had to close the book, and gingerly wrap my wrists in the elastic supports I have to use after a particularly long session typing up my thoughts on to my computer.

So yes, that cerebral muscle memory can be a double-edged sword, but practise, as they say, makes perfect less pain. Then again, practise also gives you the ability to do something you couldn't do before, too...

I visited Sorghvliet park last week to pay homage to Spring and her ability to carpet the place in bluebells for a month every year, and actually managed to crouch to take a close-up photo; a basic human ability robbed from me in my teens. But not only did I manage a crouch without too much creaking and complaining, I also managed to get up without my knees demanding that I get on all fours before attempting that tricky Standing Upright manoeuvre as they've done in the past. 

Those afore-mentioned knee-supporting muscles with whom I'm only now becoming acquainted might come in useful, after all...

Jessica Smith, I hate you, but I love you, too.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

I have a few hazy memories (supported by photographic evidence with my parents at home) of visits in the 70's to a lovely local green spot near St Andrews, called Craigtoun Park. Those early visits entailed sprawling on very typical 60's/70's folding sunbeds that could, at the least provocation, snap in half encasing your tiny self in the middle of a canvas and metal cocoon until someone with enough strength to fight the unforgiving rusty springs would come and release you from the musty dark-blue prison (we had two old loungers, but I can't for the life of me remember the colour of the other one); playing cricket with proper wooden bats, stumps and bails, and using tennis balls that, when struck well, would fly for miles; giggling with glee whilst clinging to the handles of large plastic animal kiddy rides that were basically fibreglass blobs sat atop a large and sproingy metal coil; and, if we were lucky, riding the miniature choo-choo train that chugged back and forth through the park over maybe a half mile of track.

My sister and I went back for a walk there a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoyed discovering the park again, after, oof, too many years to count. We've both been back since we were tiny, but for me one of the last times was when I was maybe ten years old or so, when my best friend's Mum worked in the office there and would get us in for free. It was during that time I discovered the boating pond and the Splash Cat pedal-boats, the Dutch Village, and Wall's Cornetto Ice Creams.

There has been a lot of change since last I visited, but, reassuringly, some things are just the same. The place where we'd set up our wooden and metal death-traps of a sunny afternoon years past is now part of the Duke's Golf Course, as is a fair part of the old park, but the train still runs around its length of track, although now sheathed in places by a health-and-safety view-blighting fence, and the Dutch Village set picturesquely on the boating pond looks just the same, even though you can no longer walk over the bridge and wander about inside.

The park, itself part of an old estate dating back to the 17th century established by the Melvilles of Strathkinness, was a part of their burgeoning family estates that included much of the surrounding area, and there's a mention of landscaping and tree-planting from late 18th century Melville family accounts that speak of their investment in beautifying the grounds. The estate changed hands in the early 20th century, and the new owner commissioned and improved much of the park as we see it today - including the mansion, the Dutch village set on an island in two connected lakes, the Italian garden, an impressive Cypress avenue, and the Mound that was originally topped by a small stone temple.

Today the Mound is temple-less, and the mansion, which after it and the grounds were sold to Fife Council in the 40's was turned first into a maternity hospital (where myself and my little sister were born) and then an old-people's home, is now derelict, but still exudes an air of grandeur past. Although I'm told that I broke the mould when I was born (which may be true in a rather disparaging manner) I refuse to accept any responsibility for its closure. I didn't break the house. Honest. And I don't suppose I can claim anything on it retaining its air of grandeur, either...

I am lucky to come from such a beautiful part of the world (eh, I'm allowed to be biased) but I have to say that I'd have visited Craigtoun Park myself long before my sister offered to drive us there for a good old hike around the grounds, had the area around my village not have turned into such an impenetrable pedestrian-free zone. 

Craigtoun Country Park is about two and a half miles away, and St Andrews itself is three miles away by different roads, and they would make excellent long walks there and back but, alas, nowadays the grass verges alongside the roads that could once be used as walking thoroughfares are pretty much non-existent no matter what route you attempt out of the village. Add to that that you just can't depend on drivers to heed the speed limit as they career around the bendy B-roads that criss-cross the countryside to give you enough time to jump out of their way before they thunder past, blasting their horn at your very impertinence in attempting to walk roads that are no longer safe for wayfarers anyway.

One of the things I love about tramping everywhere on foot in The Hague is that I get to see so much more of the place by moving at less than fifty miles per hour, and I lament that there is so much of the beautiful countryside in which my village nestles that I doubt I'll get to see properly unless I get a car (and, yannow, actually own a driver's licence...) so I can park close enough to enjoy them without running the gauntlet of avoiding road-side ditches and oncoming vehicles by just trying to get there on foot.

But until a time of enriched wanderer care I shall continue (now that I've had my little rant) to enjoy walking through the areas of beauty to which I already have access, and be content, because let's face it - I'm not really hard done-by with what's already around me!