Arriving in Kirkcaldy after 9 hours of travel. The last thing I wanted is to look into a largely derelict alleyway, masquerading as an arcade, supposedly my home for the next couple of days.

I find the one functioning doorway, but then the combination to access the key doesn’t work. Eventually, I get into the apartment, but it hasn’t been serviced. It’s going to be at least an hour before the cleaner arrives (maybe on the next flight in from Romania).

I decide on the positively reviewed Chinese restaurant close by to decamp while my new world is being put right. Only to be called out mid meal because the cleaner doesn’t have a key.

What’s more, my order of Lobster Hong Kong style doesn’t look like what I pointed to as a picture on the menu. It looks unsurprisingly like lobster that needs to be eaten using industrial machinery (okay, so I wasn’t paying attention to corresponding numbers at this point in the story):

After this introduction surely a late evening stroll around Kirkcaldy High Street and Esplanade would settle the mood music. Try it. It’s like you’re living out a scene of Irving Welsh‘s Trainspotting. The body count on the pavement rises with each Wetherspoons or W-like pub you pass.

As for the esplanade – a bland spread of tarmac and concrete has been employed to separate the sea from a seafront that would largely benefit from submergence.

Waking up to a new day, a different song lyric quickly came to mind: “Things can only get better” 🤔😂 The cleaned apartment looks so different, and that arcade offers the dubious welcome of a Couple O‘ Mugs:

Johnno runs the wonderfully ramshackle cafe, dedicated to coffee, local history, and communicating with everyone inside and outside his shop.

How else would I get the low down on my apartment’s prior history as a linen factory, and this arcade of small independents being the second oldest in Scotland!

Things are definitely changing. Away from the High Street and Esplanade, Kirkcaldy has an abundance of beautiful stone cottages and buildings.

The one non-Wetherspoons looking establishment, Krafty’s, is like intruding into someone’s family get together. It could almost tempt me back into craft ale, if I lived here; particularly as it does things with raspberries that I’m sure nature intended:

Even the Chinese restaurant was worthy of a return visit. Now I’m a local celebrated for my previous demolition of a lobster, and able to order the meal I thought I was eating.

Until we speak again, Kirkcaldy is “Getting so much better all the time,” to borrow from the Beatles. And for the record, the purpose of the visit was to watch Stenhousemuir draw 1-1 away to Raith Rovers 🤫