44 Scotland Street

44 Scotland Street is an episodic novel by Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The story was first published as a serial in The Scotsman, starting 26 January 2004, every weekday, for six months. The book retains the 100+ short chapters of the original. It was partially influenced by Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, a famous serial story. It is the first book in a series of the same name.

Plot introduction

The novel tells the story of Pat, a student during her second gap year and a source of some worry to her parents, who is accepted as a new tenant at 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's New Town, and her various roommates and neighbours. She falls in love with her narcissistic flatmate Bruce, meets the intriguing and opinionated anthropologist Domenica MacDonald and her friend Angus, and works at an art gallery for Matthew, who was given the gallery as a sinecure position by his wealthy father. While working at the gallery Pat points out to Matthew (who knows almost nothing about art) that one of their paintings looks as if it could be a work of Samuel Peploe. After the gallery is broken into Matthew asks Pat to store the painting at their flat until they can check whether it's a genuine Peploe, however Bruce gives the painting to a raffle run by the South Edinburgh Conservative Association. Matthew and Pat eventually track it down to the novelist Ian Rankin who gives it back to them. The other major storyline is that of five-year-old Bertie, who is controlled by his pretentious and intellectual mother Irene - he has Grade Six on the saxophone, speaks fluent Italian, and is extremely knowledgeable about various subjects. After he is expelled from his nursery school Irene sends him to psychotherapy with Dr Fairbairn, who constantly misinterprets Bertie's simple wish to be a normal five-year-old boy on Oedipal and Freudian lines.

Scotland Street

Scotland Street may refer to:

Scotland

Scotland (/ˈskɒt.lənd/; Scots: [ˈskɔt.lənd]; Scottish Gaelic: Alba [ˈal̪ˠapə]) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the south-west. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

Edinburgh, the country's capital and second-largest city, was the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, which transformed Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual, and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, was once one of the world's leading industrial cities and now lies at the centre of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europe's oil capital.

Burnside Avenue

Burnside Avenue is a main thoroughfare connecting East Hartford, Connecticut's Main Street to Manchester, Connecticut. The road is part of U.S. Route 44. It runs through a low income portion of East Hartford and is home to a significant population of Hispanics and African Americans. East Hartford Middle school is located near the center of the avenue and is next to the main campus of Goodwin College. The eastern portion of Burnside Avenue has little housing, but is significantly developed with strip malls and restaurants. The Avenue is home to two important parks in East Hartford. Martin Park in the west has a swimming pool and a skating park along with access to many of East Hartford's bike trails. The east of the avenue has an entrance to Wickham Park, a large private park containing an aviary, bike trails, hiking trails, picnic grounds, and a view of Hartford's skyline.

Before the turn of the 20th century, Burnside was colloquially considered a separate village from the rest of East Hartford. Its rough terrain and proximity to the Hockanum river led to early artifice, so that even before the industrial revolution, it was dominated by paper mills. By 1900, Burnside was developing as a streetcar suburb. Its development prior to Pratt and Whitney (1929) explains its high density relative to the post-war housing so prevalent in the remainder of the town.

Scotland, Connecticut

Scotland is a town in Windham County, Connecticut, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 1,556. Scotland is a predominantly rural town, with agriculture as the principal industry.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 18.7 square miles (48.3 km²), of which, 18.6 square miles (48.2 km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (0.27%) is water. It was incorporated in 1857.

History

In 1700 Isaac Magoon purchased 1,950 acres (7.9 km²) of land from then Windham and thus began Scotland’s History. He named the town Scotland as a way of commemorating his ancestral home. Scotland was incorporated in May 1857.

Government

The town still maintains the town meeting as its form of government with a board of selectmen. The town also has eight boards & commissions, including Inlands & Wetlands, Planning & Zoning and Board of Education.

Attractions

Scotland is home to the D'Elia Antique Tool Museum. The museum was built in 2005 and is housed in the same building as the Scotland Public Library. It is the home of over 1200 antique woodworking planes dating back to the mid-18th century. Another attraction is the Samuel Huntington house which located on Huntington Rd or Route 14