Summer... or very nearly

It's June.  The students have finished their exams and gone home for the long vacation, leaving the town to its citizens and the ever-present golfers.  Fulmars roost and squabble on the cliff ledges or soar out over the waves that roll up onto the West Sands.  No children play there, busily occupied with buckets and spades.  No parents husband coffee from a thermos, brush sand from sandwiches or make the trip to the beach cafe for ice cream or crisps.

The large houses along The Scores stand quiet within their garden walls.  The largest of them all, the castle, waits patiently for a new coachload of tourists to explore its history or perhaps venture down into the darkness of its mine and counter-mine.

Flowers spring up along the clifftops of the Kirkhill leading to the cathedral, and boats wait for the turn of the tide in the harbour below.

People still go about their business on the pavements of the cobbled streets.  Shops, pubs and restaurants still fill and empty with the ebb and flow of customers, but overall there is a sense of waiting.

At the end of next week, fourth-year students and their families will return for graduation.  The hotels and guest-houses in the town will fill.  There will be graduation meals and celebrations and then the graduates and their proud parents will return home to another life.

St Andrews is always here, however, in rain and wind and storm; in snow and in sunshine.  In the week following graduation Scottish schools will begin their summer holidays.  The West Sands and the East Sands will be populated by families, no matter what the weather.  Golfers will still clatter along the streets pulling bags of clubs behind them and tourists and cadies will drink together in the bars and discuss the day's game; because it's summer... or, very nearly