In which we explore Cupar and get our keys

J and I got up at the crack of dawn and got a taxi to Arrochar to catch the 7:10am train to Glasgow. With the insouciance of fate, R was away at a conference in Barcelona with the car (that is the car was in Glasgow Airport – it didn’t get to go on the plane) and there was no way of getting to Cupar in the morning by public transport.  We had been promised by the lawyer that the keys would be ready for collection by 10am, and whilst I took this with a pinch of salt, I was expecting to have them by noon.

So the idea was to get them, have a look around our long awaited house, and then go to Dundee to spend the night at the Premier Inn.  The next day I would return to meet R in Dumbarton, and J would stay on in Dundee (there are no proper hotels in Cupar itself).

So everything went fine with the journey.  Cupar is on the main line between Edinburgh, Dundee and Edinburgh, so has excellent connections to all the main cities in Scotland (although not to the rest of Fife as it is not on the Fife commuter line to Glenrothes.  We changed trains in Glasgow and again at Haymarket, and were in Cupar at the Estate agent the back of 10am.  As expected, the keys were not ready, so we went off for a cup of coffee and a bacon roll in a very nice teashop, and then had a walk around Cupar.

As I have mentioned, Cupar is a pleasant and pretty small town, but there is nothing particular to do or look at, so we wandered about the shops, and at 12 went back to the estate agent.  Still nothing doing.  They told us to go and have lunch and the keys would be ready when we got back.  We had a drink in a pub and then a rather nice lunch in the second restaurant we found (strangely the first one we tried was full to the gills).  Then we went back to the estate agent.  Still no keys.  It was now 2pm and I was becoming agitated – we could have saved ourselves £100 for the taxi and just taken the bus.

We had another cup of tea and a cake in the same tea shop as that morning (they recognized us) and then went for a walk in the park.  While we were sitting feeling sorry for ourselves, we noticed a plaque on the rather smart bandstand.  In 1924, the bandstand had been donated to the town of Cupar by Ann Black of Castlebank.  This was our house, and Ann Black was the grandson of Alexander Black who had built the house.  Obviously, this was a good omen, because at that point we were told that the keys were finally ready.

We went over to the house.  I had been worrying for the last several weeks and particularly all that day, that the house would not be as magnificent as we remembered it being, but we were wrong.  It looked very grand as we walked up our driveway and the garden of course looked a great deal better today than it had back in February when we last saw it.

We were rather less pleased, however, when we got into the house, and found that the previous owners were still there together with many of their possessions.  Don’t get me wrong, they were a pleasant couple and I bear them no ill will, but by then it was nearly 5pm and we were bursting to walk around the place on our own.  It was also very apparent that they had not anywhere near finished clearing the place out.  However after a lengthy chat, they finally left, promising to come back the next day and clear everything out.

J and I walked around our new possession.  It was even huger than we remembered, but looking a little sad and definitely in need of a bit of TLC with patches on the walls where the paintings had been, peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpets.  But that was what we were there to change.  Upstairs, the vendors had left a large quantity of “Cindy Doll” style furniture – white melamine wardrobes with mirrored doors in three of the bedrooms even though we had specifically told them we didn’t want it.  There were piles of boxes and bags in every room and the airing cupboard was packed with what looked like ancient curtains.  In the garage, as well as hundreds of empty plastic plant pots, there were about 30 rusting cans of paint, and horror of horrors, two car tyres.

After a couple of hours looking around, we walked to the station and took the train to Dundee.  J had never been here before, but I had visited quite a few times.  The waterfront actually looked very grand with the Discovery ship and museum and the new V&A – and our hotel was right next to it with fantastic views over the Tay to both bridges.  J moaned about his room being on the ground floor – nothing new there.