Its Fish

Long before Scottish weddings became affairs of hotel packages, photographers and carefully arranged seating plans, marriage could involve banns from the kirk, a loosened shoe against witchcraft, neighbours supplying the feast and, in some places, a piece of shortbread broken over the bride’s head. The customs survive in an 1894 book that has largely slipped from ordinary reading: Bygone Scotland: Historical and Social, by David Maxwell.

Minutes published in July reveal that Scottish Water, SEPA and the Scottish Government do not share the same understanding of the baseline for a national sewer-overflow improvement programme. The economic regulator is also asking why projects have moved into later investment periods — and what customers received from investment made instead. Scotland has a programme to improve some of its most problematic sewer overflows.

Fife Council is preparing to seek planning permission for the first council-led section of a new strategic road across the north of Dunfermline. The scheme includes a new railway bridge, closure of a level crossing and a mixture of council- and developer-built sections forming part of a much larger programme of housing and employment growth. A new road network is beginning to take shape around the northern edge of Dunfermline.