Good Timing

Timing is the key to success in everything from stand up comedy to sport to writing careers, to, it turns out, TV viewing. For the last decade or so, I have been enjoying the crime dramas and mysteries that the UK turns out on an industrial scale: Vera, A Touch of Frost, Morse and Lewis and Endeavor, Inspector Lynley and Foyle's War, all good, all entertaining. 

At the same time, I am very glad I came late to them, because a steady diet of crime in the hinterland would have spoiled a good many charming summers in Scotland. From the early 70's through the late 80's, we spent those summers in St. Andrews. My husband covered the British Open golf and the start of the football ( soccer) season and thanks to the cheap student housing we rented, I had a desk and a place to write. We visited my many relatives, saw football, and got very fit cycling. Wonderful. 

Eden river

Particularly enjoyable, though, was the birding. Fife is quite rural; it has a spectacular seacoast, an excellent estuary, and various lochs (lakes) in the interior, all unspoiled by TV programs. For example, I used to visit Morton Lochs, a pair of ponds with an excellent range of waterfowl on the edge of Tentsmuir Forest. To reach this birding spot, I either walked or cycled to the St. A's bus station and took the bus for Dundee. The driver would let me off at the farm track that led to the loch. I returned on the same route, waiting at the side of the deserted road. 

 In fair weather, this was an enjoyable junket, and it never crossed my mind that I was possibly in mortal danger. I did not then envision mysterious dark vans, homicidal drivers or motorcyclists, and I certainly never looked at the dark waters of the lochs and imagined police divers or sinister floating objects. 

Another venue that remained unspoiled in those vacation days was the Eden estuary. The River Eden separates the famous golf courses from Leuchars RAF base. The extensive mudflats before the water reaches the North Sea is an outstanding site for waders and waterfowl. I spent many happy hours tramping across the mud in high boots. Admittedly, I had to watch for the turn of the tide, which is rapid, but being ignorant of the many mud flat and seaside fatalities of UK drama spared me a lot of anxiety.

Old Course

 The celebrated Old Course offers a similar case. This venerable athletic ground, shaped in part by grazing sheep and bad weather, is neither the property of some entitled billionaire nor of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club. It is owned by the people of St. Andrews who jealously maintain their access. On Sundays there is no golfing on the Old Course; she is a strict Sabbatarian and on the seventh day, she rests, and the townspeople walk the course and let their dogs run. I thought this was a charming custom.

 Now I realize that the local canines must have had singularly poor noses never to have turned up a single corpse in the thickets of gorse or the mighty sand traps. I was blithely ignorant of many other hazards and pitfalls of rural British life. How many folk have tumbled down the steep slopes past the harbor or met a violent end on the deserted beach at the Rock and Spindle, a geologic curiosity so convenient to a secluded walking track? How many have fallen into crime or disaster at the holiday caravan site, another television sink of iniquity. 

In those days, too, I could regard the summer garden fetes, popular Scottish fundraising events, as a harmless diversion. Now, of course, I know that the teas and pastries and even games of skill and chance like "Beat the Goalie" where our small son won a tea towel, are just covers for internecine feuds that rival the Game of Thrones. 

Fife coast

 Truly, Sherlock Holmes was right when he declared the rural world more full of crime and evil than any big city – as least as far as TV goes. The convenience of open fields, uncluttered roads, and big beaches clearly outweighs reality when it comes to fictional crime venues for folks with big trailers and trucks and buses full of actors.

 Just the same, I'm glad that I was not yet burdened by vivid scenes of rural murder and mayhem while rambling all those lovely but isolated mud flats, beaches, and country walks.