Portrait of the Scottish Sea

Only during the two-week quarantine I am realising how many people I am close to could not come and had to stay home due to the pandemic. My extracurricular activities of the past years, ballroom dancing and Amnesty International, are like almost everything shaped by local restrictions – classes and competitions had moved online. In turn, though usually occupied with studying or writing for the new student magazine UnEarth, I was searching for new opportunities to leave the flat. And perhaps out of sentimentality caused by the knowledge that I will most likely leave East Scotland soon, I am beginning to spend most of my free time by the sea.

From almost all places in St Andrews it is possible to access the sea in under twenty minutes. The inconstant blue not only surrounds the town, but also co-creates it. Lovers of all ages, families around a bonfire, surfing students, packs of dogs – they are all to be seen at the two main beaches, West Sands and East Sands. With restaurants and pubs closed, social life has moved towards this seemingly endless surface, around which – to the screeching of seagulls – rosy-cheeked people flow.

And I am one of them – with tea or coffee, with friends or alone. Sometimes I collect seashells to decorate my flat with. Other times I walk to the sea after lunch and, sitting on a bench, I read to the all-embracing sea-sounds. Usually, however, I arrive just before the sunset, between four and five, and watch how on the horizon shades of gold, purple, and azure merge. In that moment the sky and the sea of St Andrews mirror one another, expand to all directions. Buildings hundreds of years old are then mere contours of what are stunning architectural features during the day.

Diverse in uniformity, the Scottish sea helps me get through a semester otherwise defined by English Renaissance texts and the art of Latin America. It is the unfamiliar and the constant, having as many meanings as it has forms.