A Tour of the University

Yesterday morning, David and I sent the kids to school, then walked into town to take one of the official tours of St. Andrews. We were a few minutes late, but so was our tour guide, as she had just finished filming a BBC special about Prince William’s days in St. Andrews. There was one prospective student on the tour and her father, and the tour guide began by asking all of us (with a bit of a confused look on her face) if we were prospective students. That was especially generous of her given the frizziness of my hair, but I assured her that we had completed college over 20 years ago and would just be bringing some American students to the university to study. That seemed to put her at ease, and she commenced with the tour.

Overall, it was just a run-of-the-mill college tour that every institution of higher education in the States seems to give: here’s the library with its unfortunate 1960’s architecture, here are some residence halls, here are some academic buildings and here’s a tip about how to choose your classes. She talked (as all college tour guides do) about the traditions through with a student would find him or herself covered in shaving cream, and those through which a student would find him or herself diving into an icy body of water late at night. This body of water happened to be the North Sea rather than a manmade campus pond, but the gist was the same.

There was one twist to this tour, however: the tour guide showed us the spot (now marked in the cobblestones along North Street) where Patrick Hamilton, a former student at the University, was burned at the stake for heresy. She then explained, with a twinkle in her eye, that one would never see a student step on the cobblestones marked with PH because it “would bring you bad luck and cause you to fail your degree.” Supposedly, if a student haphazardly steps upon the PH, their subsequent bad luck can be overcome by jumping into the North Sea on the first of May. She then directed us to look up at the facing building, which is St. Salvator’s Chapel, to see a ghostly image that resembles a human face, which she said (with yet another twinkle in her eye), that the image is supposedly Patrick Hamilton himself looking down upon the site of his burning to make sure no student treads on it. It all made for quite a creepy addition to a college tour—and certainly one of the few college tours that includes a burning-at-the-stake tale!

She also demonstrated how one can determine the year in which a student is currently enrolled at the university by the way in which he or she wears the university-issued red gown with a burgundy collar. First-year students are supposed to wear the gown high on their shoulders and closed around their neck, as if to signify their discomfort with the whole college thing. Second years wear it lower across their shoulders, while third year students wear it off either their right or left shoulder, depending on whether they are in the school of arts or sciences. Fourth-year students, of course, wear it off the shoulders completely, as if to signify that they are almost out the door. Also, it is apparently bad luck to button the gown, or to wash it, meaning the takeaway message is not to get too close to a student wearing one! And it’s also apparently illegal for a student to be served alcohol while wearing the gown (a fact that can be filed under “nice try by the university administration…”).

After our tour, we walked across the street for lunch, and stopped into one of the many restaurants that offer a two-course lunch for £5.95. This restaurant, the Glass House, was located just across from St. Salvator’s, so we got a great view of the PH in the cobblestones as we ate (making me search the menu for anything that had not been grilled.) Our lunch was, as they say in Britain, “lovely.” David took the opportunity to try not only haggis for the first time, but black pudding as well. Haggis, for the uninitiated, is a mixture of sheep organs

(the lungs, liver and heart), chopped up and fried with onion, oats and spices, then stuffed into the sheep’s stomach to be boiled, while black pudding is cooked blood that is mixed with oatmeal, cooked then cooled so that the blood will congeal (is your mouth watering yet?) Both kind of resemble sausage. I did taste a bite of the haggis, and can report that it is indeed tasty, and quite peppery. I didn’t brave the black pudding, however!

By the way, the Guardian has just released a news article that says that the United States has now decided to lift the ban on haggis, which stemmed from the outbreak of mad-cow disease in Great Britain. A link to the article is below. Read up, and rest assured that you too can now start to look for haggis at your local grocer! Yeah!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/24/america-haggis-ban-lifted-burns

P. S. All of my Upstate New York friends will be happy to see what was waiting for us at the table at the Glass House: