It's amazing what you can see if you only raise your eyes

 

This house at 11, South Castle Street, St Andrews was home to Joan Clark, the last fishwife of St Andrews.  Joan lived upstairs in one room with her husband, Henry, and her son.  Downstairs was used to store fishing tackle and the barrow Joan pushed to sell her fish.

Unlike her Dublin counterpart, the more famous Molly Malone, Joan didn't "die of a fever and no-one could save her".  Nor does she still "wheel her wheelbarrow through the streets broad and narrow".  She lived a long and healthy life until her death in 1927 at the age of 75. 

Many years ago I met Mary Brown, Joan's niece, and she told me how she would bring meals to her elderly aunt.  Joan, like most women of that generation, was extremely houseproud, and Mary told me that her aunt's bed was like a drift of snow, so white were her sheets.  In later years, Joan enjoyed leaning out of her window and chatting with her neighbour in the house opposite.

Back to raising your eyes.  At some point in time, the pantiles of Joan's roof were decorated with a clay cat chasing a rat which was chasing a mouse.  The mouse was blown off in a storm, but the cat and the rat remain, eternally racing across the rooftop.