The following recount was first published on Friday, April 11, 2025
My oldest daughter, then aged 17, and I had rented an apartment in Edinburgh. This was in the summer of 2023. The apartment was at Learmonth Gardens, which is a 30- to 40-minute walk from Edinburgh town centre, and another 25 minutes from the Castle.
I had considered the use of a rental car to get us around during our stay. But—people in Scotland driving on the left side of the road—I thought better of it. In the country of my exile we drive in the middle of the road, and I no longer felt confident navigating traffic rules based on the principle that motor cars shall press to a particular side of the road, be that left or right.
My daughter and I share a disgust of cabs and public transport (the latter mostly too complex for our lazy and feeble minds), and so we ended up walking long distances every day.
We made an exception for the train to North Queensferry, across the spectacular cantilever Forth Bridge. That is a trip we did twice—both times losing more than an hour over matching the slew of ticket, payment, and platform options offered at Edinburgh Waverley railway station (1.5 mi. from Learmonth Gardens) with our humble objective to get to North Queensferry Railway Station.
The train takes one across, and away from, the touristic hassle of Edinburgh town. My daughter and I have a penchant for the quiet and the indigenous in foreign nations we visit—notwithstanding our equally strong penchant for flagship-store shopping, fancy drinks on the terraces of bars, and dinners at upscale restaurants or other eating places interesting enough to separate us from the crowd.
During our second visit to North Queensferry, as we sat recovering at the charming, tiny (“wee”) Rankin’s Café from a half-hearted attempt to walk out as far as we dared along a footpath by the Firth of Forth, we decided that next time, we would hike the trail all the way to a far-off town we could see from a certain vantage point near the Forth Bridge’s base. It seemed to consist of very light-coloured, almost white buildings, which struck us as irresistibly romantic and fairytale-like.
But we never did.
Back in our apartment at Learmonth Gardens, we consulted various maps on the internet and decided the town we had seen from afar must be Inverkeithing.
In view of what follows—and to protect my daughter and myself from the wrath of the Inverkeithingers—I should stress that both my daughter and I are extremely poor map readers, and that I have a bad memory for names of places and people alike, as well as train stations.
So even if, as I checked just now, there’s little to be found on the map between North Queensferry and Inverkeithing, and even if “Inverkeithing” isn’t the kind of name likely to come to one’s mind by coincidence, in the account that follows I may be confusing names, dates, and places.
A few days after our second visit to North Queensferry, we took the train across the Firth of Forth a third time—this time to Inverkeithing, just one stop up from North Queensferry.
We found the area around the train station, located well outside the town’s borders, singularly drab and depressing. The overcast skies and temperatures struggling not to drop to the low 50s did little to improve our sentiment.
But we thought this would change once we sallied into the town proper.
We had left our apartment early to walk to Edinburgh Waverley, and by the time we arrived at Inverkeithing Train Station, our first thoughts were very much with finding a place to have hot chocolate over some pastry.
We started out crossing empty roads and roundabouts toward what looked like Inverkeithing’s outskirts. We arrived at a residential area consisting of featureless, sludge-coloured homes on grey asphalt streets.
We explored this neighbourhood for about two hours in search of food and drink. But whichever direction we took, there wasn’t a café, bar, supermarket, convenience or grocery store, or shop of any kind to be seen.
Having spent all this time out in the cold weather looking just for a place to sit down, use the bathroom, and get our bearings—one of my many issues being that I’m incapable of timing the moment when to cut off a hopeless campaign—our lust for romance and adventure had deflated to the point where we no longer felt a desire even to find our way out of this suburban hell toward an “old town” with cobbled streets, pubs, diners, and, well, just any kind of life.
Instead, we made our way back to the train station.
We did not stoop so low as to head back to Waverley by train straight from Inverkeithing, though. Following directions on my daughter’s smartphone, we descended to Inverkeithing’s end of the footpath along the Firth of Forth—the one we had partly explored from North Queensferry—and followed it to that charming old hamlet at the foot of the Forth Bridge, with its restored “light tower” (i.e. lighthouse), where we would have our hot cocoa after all, at the “wee” (i.e. tiny) Rankin’s Café, and take the train back to Edinburgh.
This we accomplished.
We found that the descent from Inverkeithing Train Station to the beginning of the trail back to North Queensferry, and the hike along the Firth of Forth over that trail, were beautiful and gratifying to our non-linear minds.
Those beautiful, romantic minds, that could be so easily duped at any time by the lure of a thing shimmering in the distance—arguably named “Inverkeithing.”
Part 2 – The letter from the Provost of Fife
I was served with a letter bearing the official embossed seal of Fife County. The letter, dated April 13th 2025, ran as follows:
Dear Mrs. Potter,
This is in regard to a post on your internet blog Hard Nosed Women (A Guide to Advanced Female Thinking), titled Oh, Those Incorrigible Romantic Minds of Women.
I write this letter at the behest and on behalf of the Council and the People of Fife, as I do, with no lesser mandate and motivation, to give voice to my own sentiments with respect to said post, both in my capacity as Provost of Fife and in private capacity as a concerned individual and a Scot.
With greatest dismay, we read your disparaging account of a purported visit in the summer of 2023 by you and your daughter, then aged 17, to the town of Inverkeithing in Fife County.
It is our opinion that you have given an iniquitous and injurious image of Inverkeithing, based on nothing but an alleged visit, following your alighting at Inverkeithing train station, to a residential area at the town’s outer limits.
From your description, we think we have been able to identify said area as the part marked “Outer Visual Gateway,” north of the area marked “Town Centre,” in the diagram inserted below.
Diagram taken from Inverkeithing Town Centre Framework, 04-02-16
In your post, you admit that for no cause but attributable to yourself (we respectfully refer to the “many issues” that you seem to concede you are struggling with), you failed to reach Inverkeithing’s historic town centre, featuring many listed items including the Friary, the Town House, and the Mercat Cross—all of which stand to be restored to their former glory under the Inverkeithing Heritage Regeneration (2019–2024) scheme.
Instead, you found yourself bogged down in the aforementioned residential area north of Inverkeithing Town Centre (which may not present the prettiest of introductions to Inverkeithing, but which definitely does possess a supermarket).
This, combined with weather conditions that more often than not serve to define the widely acclaimed mystic beauty of Scotland, is the basis of your damning report on Inverkeithing.
As you are doubtlessly aware, your internet blog is eagerly read in all parts of the world, Fife County not excepted. Not just the inhabitants of said residential area—referred to in your post as a “suburban hell” (no less)—take issue with your defamatory post, but so do all citizens of Inverkeithing and, indeed, of Fife County, including, to disabuse you of any hope of allegiance or sympathy, the people of North Queensferry, that you extol as “that charming old hamlet at the foot of the Forth Bridge.”
Said citizens’ immediate and deep discontent resulted in a petition, carried by many thousands of signatories, within hours following publication of your post, to the Chief Executive of Fife Council, the Mayor of Inverkeithing, and myself as Provost of Fife.
Pursuant to the petition—of which said Chief Executive, the Mayor, and I are in full agreement—the Chief Executive will propose to the Council of Fife at its next full session that it approve the following actions to be taken against you (but not your daughter, who was only 17 and thus not of age at the time), should you ever consider setting foot in Fife County again (if only, for the avoidance of doubt, to have a hot cocoa over some pastry at Rankin’s Café in North Queensferry), and Inverkeithing in particular:
§ First:
Should you wish to visit Inverkeithing again—which by no means, whether of a statutory, written, oral, physical, or any other nature, you shall be prevented from doing—you shall give advance notice thereof to: inverkeithingcommunitycouncil@hotmail.co.uk.
Kindly note, for your convenience, that said opening hours reflect a deep-rooted resistance—which we Scots are proud of—to a 24-hour economy, nay, even to a 40-hour working week.
§ Second:
Alighting at Inverkeithing railway station, you shall order a taxi to take you directly to Inverkeithing Town House, thereby avoiding setting foot in any residential area separating the station from the Town Centre.
An up-to-date list of taxi services shall be provided to you by email forthwith upon your notice in accordance with item the First.
§ Third:
Starting at Inverkeithing Town House, you shall be allowed freely to explore Inverkeithing Town Centre, and moreover shall be invited (and strongly suggested) to make use of a bespoke guided tour, compliments of Inverkeithing.
§ Fourth:
At the end of your visit, you shall partake in a dinner offered in your honour by the Council of Fife, the Inverkeithing Community Council, and the Mayor of Inverkeithing.
Even if such goes against the nature and beliefs of the Scottish people, said dinner shall respect any vegetarian or vegan dietary requirements that you may notify us of in advance.
§ Fifth:
During said dinner, you shall neither be required nor even expected to make any apologies for the contested post. However, aforementioned Authorities shall be concluding the evening in the aspiration of receiving a favourable review on your blog, titled Opening One’s Eyes, on the beauty of Inverkeithing’s Town Centre and—notwithstanding item the Seventh hereafter—the kindness and forgivingness of the people of Fife.
§ Sixth:
Following dinner, you shall accept to be taken back to Inverkeithing train station by car (compliments of the Provost of Fife), so as to avoid any risk of physical encounters with inhabitants of any residential area separating the Town Centre from the station.
§ Seventh:
Observance of any of the foregoing failing (with the exception of item the Fifth, which does not impose any obligation onto you), you shall be publicly executed at the Mercat Cross (following completion of the restoration thereof per aforementioned Inverkeithing Heritage Regeneration scheme) by as many strokes of a Lochaber axe as may be required to occasion indisputable death.
In observance of the Freedom of Information Act and related Scottish policies aimed at active disclosure of documents not containing privileged information, this letter shall be published at https://www.fife.gov.uk/news.
Yours sincerely,
[etc…]
I find the Provost of Fife’s letter to be largely fair and generous.
I admire, too, the people of Fife for their capability of putting together a collective action resulting in a petition with thousands of signatures—offered to the Provost, the Chief Executive, and the Mayor within hours of the publication of Part I above, which occurred on April 12, 2025, a Saturday—as much as I admire the Provost of Fife for having succeeded in having the letter cited above served to me the next day, Sunday, April 13, 2025.
Clearly not being the injured party, though—and seeing that the Mercat Cross, dying at the foot of which in the way described appeals to me erotically, is under a restoration scheme that will almost certainly be delayed for many years beyond 2025—I expect my response to the Provost of Fife to be forthcoming at a somewhat slower pace.
Hard Nosed Women 