18 December 2024
Greetings,
This evening sees the University’s London Alumni Club hold their annual Carol Service in St Columba’s Church of Scotland, Pont Street, at 7 pm. I will be leading the service at which Revd Professor Alison Baverstock MBE, founder of Reading Force, will preach, and an alumni choir will sing. If you are going this evening, I look forward to seeing you there. There are still tickets available, which includes entry to the reception afterwards – see https://www.eventsforce.net/standrews/240/register
Feathers
Part 18
The story so far: Promised to both Maryam and Joe, Josh is growing bigger in Maryam’s womb.
One day, with no sign of any arrival, Maryam had to go into St Andrews. She had received an email from the University saying that it was time for the mandatory Census of Tier 4 Visa-holding students. As an international student Maryam was required to attend two such touchpoints through the year, bringing her passport and student card to prove her identity. The University’s UKVI Compliance Group had a responsibility, the email said, to ensure monitoring of visa-holding students’ attendance and academic performance, and to report any unreasonably irregular patterns of engagement to the authorities.
Joe had been given time off by his father and was able to accompany Maryam to St Andrews, catching the 95 bus from the village square, on a cold, clear midwinter’s day. There was the sweet smell of woodsmoke in the air from surrounding chimneys, and lights twinkling from windows. Blue tits thronged a table laden with nuts in a tiny front garden. The bus crawled its way between fields, sheep grazing stalks of sprouts left behind from harvesting. They made the tight bend at Kenly then wheezed up the hill towards Boarhills, the 95 protesting at the gradient. At the bus station, Joe helped Maryam clamber carefully down, before they walked through the darkening afternoon to Parliament Hall. It was thronged with students, flushed in the room’s warmth, talking rapidly, sharing news of exams they’d taken under this roof just a week ago, hoping that UK Visas and Immigration wouldn’t uncover any infractions. Robin had talked Maryam through the visa implications of her having a baby, and it seemed she could stay as long as she returned to her studies full-time after taking leave.
And so, when she reached the head of the queue, Maryam showed her documents, her face was compared with her passport, and she was registered, along with St Andrews students who had found their way to the United Kingdom from Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Americas and Europe, in the very oak-panelled room where Fife-born King Charles called the Scottish Parliament to assemble in 1645, there being plague in Edinburgh, some four years before he was put to death for high treason.
Kings including King of Scots (central panel), Castello Brown, Portofino
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain