the scotland post

I mentioned a while back that I might post in the future about the more positive experiences of my year of postgraduate studies in Scotland. I think it'll be helpful for me now to post about this, given all the anxiety that memories of Scotland have provoked in me lately - now that I'm just about to move overseas (again) to study. I'm not feeling particularly gifted at narration right now, so I'll make a bullet-list.

Some things I liked about St Andrews:
1) Arriving in the city for the very first time, taking a walk down to the Castle and seeing the sunset flickering behind the mediaeval ruins. The scene was so beautiful that I daresay my neck-hairs prickled and my eyes smarted.

2) The Old Course, which I admit really is a beautiful place to play golf, even though I am otherwise leery of such an elitist, sexist and environmentally reckless 'sport' (I'm thinking, noxious herbicides and fertilisers, excessive water consumption, and wetlands encroachment for starters). Anyway, until I considered studying at St Andrews, golf was the only thing I'd ever associated with the place, as a result of my father's keen interest in watching plaid-clad country-club types on TV, thwacking their way out of bunkers during the British Open.

3) My friends D, C, J, and L. D (from Iran) and C (from Germany) made me a very special dinner for my 23rd birthday, which I will always remember. And L introduced me to the sublime indie pop of Belle & Sebastian, for which I will be forever grateful.

4) My thesis supervisor (and friend), JC, a dapper, handsome Canadian environmental historian with a razor-sharp brain, who always treated me as a colleague rather than a student. His most significant gift to me was the 'permission' to start over and go to midwifery school, when I was facing a career in academia with desperate reluctance and panic. In other words, he put it into my head (one afternoon over lunch in a Scottish pub) that I could, in fact, hot-foot it out of Scotland, and out of a soulless job in environmental policy, and follow my real passion. I had told him that I was thinking of changing my academic specialty to medical/obstetrical history instead of environmental policy (the two are obliquely connected, if you can believe). He said, you know, I've been hearing you drop all these hints to yourself for a while now, and I think that what you'd really like to do is to become a midwife. And now you're thinking, I'm stuck in academia, so perhaps the only thing to do is write books about the history of childbirth. But that's just being a midwife by proxy... so go be a midwife, for real! What the hell is stopping you?

5) Taking the train from St Andrews to Edinburgh every so often, and familiarising myself with the city of punky youths, gothic spires, oddly-placed public staircases, ghosts, and expansive tulipped parks.

6) Being so astonishingly well cared-for by the NHS (the joys of socialised medicine!) after tearing my ulnar collateral ligament (a common thumb injury). My doctor, radiographer and nurse were all South Africans working in the UK (yikes). I got a purple thermal plastic thumb splint made especially for me, and saw an occupational therapist who specialised in hands, who taught me exercises to rehabilitate my metacarpophalangeal joint (can you say that three times, really quickly?). My thumb is still creaky to this day (especially when it's cold or I lift dumbbells above my head), but during that episode I received by far the best health care I've ever had, in any country. And it was totally free.

7) Walking in the rain along the Fife Coastal Path, between Tayport and Pittenweem, with the freezing ocean crashing on the rocks below and seagulls squawking overhead.

8) Being part of the One World Society (the local chapter of People & Planet) at the university, and participating in a colourful, 200-strong ethical investment demonstration in the streets of St Andrews in late 2005.