Last Friday was the last graduation of the
season here at St Andrews in Fife,
Scotland. The
students perambulated along the
streets and on the Scores in their black robes and coloured hoods, accompanied by
proud family members, like the
figures on the promenade outside the Grand Hotel at Balbec, described by Marcel
Proust in his epic novel À
la recherche du temps perdu. This literary allusion is not an
affectation by the writer: I recall
reading in the University’s Special
Collection some years ago a volume of verse by students of over a century ago,
recording their distress as they wandered among the
dunes on the West Sands at having to
leave what Andrew Lang called affectionately ‘the
Auld Grey Toun’ by the North Sea. The new female graduates were in
white blouses and black skirts, some of the
men in kilts. The concert of sacred music by the
University Choir in St Salvator’s Chapel (founded 1450) was packed. The marquee
on the lower lawn of St Salvator’s
College vibrated to the graduation
balls. Next morning it was time to leave St Andrews,
to take a powder for the hangover,
and pile into the family vehicle
four years of accumulated possessions. One student showed me a plastic box
containing superseded mobile phones. How many texts had he tapped out on them to female students he was infatuated with, but
who rejected him with a two word expletive? The new graduates returned their robes and hoods to the
hirers, having sold their famous red
gowns and put into charity shops the
clothes they
had no room for in the car, or which
were out of fashion. I saw a stunning blonde, with the
tattoo of a heart on her left ankle, licking a last chocolate-flavoured cone
from Luvians in Market Street.
Restaurants and hotels were offering graduation lunches, and in one
establishment, where I was consuming a modest sandwich, I observed a champagne
bottle frothing into a cluster of celebration glasses. This week there will be skips on the
pavements outside the flats of departed
graduates. Carpets matted with pizzas will have to be ripped up, and fittings
damaged in too riotous parties replaced. It wasn’t the
weather that marred slightly the glamour of the
graduations: it was the announcement
that a German princess had been fined one thousand pounds for disorderly
conduct at a student party in the
environs of St Andrews in March. Evidently Her
Serene Highness, who arrived at court in a brown wig, tried to climb a fence before shedding some of her garments.
The former student of International Relations was accused of making racist
remarks before attacking a security guard and a first aider, and had to be restrained
in handcuffs. But she
wasn’t the first royal to study at
St Andrews. My dear wife Mary, emerging from a wynd one evening several years
ago, was almost knocked down by Prince William with his Tesco shopping bag of
organic produce recommended by his father.
As potatoes scattered on the cobbles Mary was terrified that the plain clothes
detective behind the Prince would take
it as a terrorist attack and whip out a firearm, asking questions later over
her riddled corpse. His Highness was full of apologies and helped Mary regain her balance. She was so dazed, not by the collision, but
by the royal encounter, that she
forgot to ask for his autograph. I recall that when the
future occupant of the British
throne entered a particular hostelry on the
Scores for a modest shandy, a female student would text all her friends, and they would come running, because at that stage Kate
Middleton, a fellow student at the
university, was not yet the chosen
one. At that time the manholes of St Andrews were sealed by Special Branch in case an
assassin – or a female student in a wetsuit, determined to date the Prince - came crawling underground. |
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CategoriesMontecassino Madonna War Romance MonksST ANDREWS, FIFE, SCOTLAND St Andrews, horses |
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