Back to school

Just back from a short break in St Andrews with my wife and my mother.

Although I visit St Andrews several times a year - usually after watching football in Dundee - this is only the second time my mother has been back to Fife since my parents returned to England in the late Seventies.

From 1969 to 1978 we lived in Wormit, a village that overlooks Dundee and the River Tay, and for six of those years (1970-1976) I went to school in St Andrews, twelve miles away.

From 1967 to 2021 Madras College was split across two campuses that were a mile-and-a-half apart.

The original building, in the centre of town, dates back to 1832, when the school was founded, and this week we stayed in an apartment in the old schoolhouse (above) that was once the home of the headmaster (or rector) and was built the same year.

In 2021 the school moved to a new £50 million campus on the edge of town and the original South Street site, with its Grade II listed building, has been bought by the university and is being redeveloped before its eventual unveiling as ‘New College’.

Anyway, on Tuesday morning we walked around the ruins of St Andrews Castle, which overlooks the sea and is home of the famous bottle dungeon, ‘one of medieval Britain's most infamous castle prisons’.

By coincidence, one of the guides was a former physics teacher at Madras, albeit long after I was there, and I was able to tell him about my physics teacher, a charismatic Cambridge graduate who ran off with the young French teacher (who really was French) and neither was seen or heard of again.

We then drove down the coast to Anstruther, a small fishing village I have written about many times, where we had lunch in the award-winning Anstruther Fish Bar, before returning to St Andrews to see a student production of Dr Faustus at the local Byre Theatre.

This was another trip down memory lane because I was in several school productions at the Byre including Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (Easter 1974) and Our Town (January 1976), a three-act play written by American playwright Thornton Wilder in 1938.

(Of all the plays I was in at school and university, Our Town was probably my favourite, although you’d have to forgive my comically awful American accent.)

In the summer of 1976 I was also a body double in a professional production performed by the Byre’s resident company.

Sadly I can’t remember much about it apart from the fact that, late in the play, I had to fall out of a cupboard at the back of the stage whereupon the lights went out and I had to scramble off in the dark amid laughter and applause.

Founded in 1933 on the site of an old cow byre, the current building - opened in 2001 - is the third to be built since then (the building I performed in was the second) but the company that owned it went into administration a decade ago and the theatre is now run by the university.

I’m not sure that Dr Faustus (an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlow) would be high on my list of must sees, but it was entertaining enough, and a small but enthusiastic audience (mostly students) seemed to enjoy it.

Finally, a shout out to Haar, an award-winning restaurant where we had dinner on Wednesday.

Named after the thick sea mist that is common in St Andrews (and Wormit), Haar is on the same site as The Niblick, the first bar I ever bought a drink in, aged 15. The second was The Castle pub in North Street, a five minute walk from The Niblick.

Neither exists today (The Castle is now a private residence) but at least the old Niblick building is in good hands. Warmly recommended, should you ever find yourself in that neck of the woods.

PS. I don’t remember this but, according to Wikipedia, act one of Our Town ends with the Stage Manager (one of the leading characters) telling the audience:

"That's the end of Act I, folks. You can go and smoke, now. Those that smoke."

Those were the days.

Below: St Andrews Castle on Tuesday