Five things you must do this week…

600 trees for 600 years! We’re 600 years old (who knew? It’s not like we have a café called the 1413 or anything) and Transition St Andrews is hosting an event […]


600 trees for 600 years! We’re 600 years old (who knew? It’s not like we have a café called the 1413 or anything) and Transition St Andrews is hosting an event where we get to plant trees – 600 of them! Transition have teamed up with the Woodland Trust, who are providing spades and trees as part of their target to plant 6 million trees in 2012. So, on Wednesday at 2pm outside Uni Hall and DRA wear some sturdy footwear and clothes you don’t mind getting muddy (the Raisin 2011 T-shirt will do, you know, the one you’ve never worn).

Britain’s most brutal race! St Andrews Expedition Society, in association with Edinburgh Expeditions, is hosting a talk in Sallies Quad about the challenges of climbing in Madagascar and the ‘Spine Challenge’ in the UK. The Spine Challenge is famed for being ‘Britain’s most brutal race’, a 268 mile non-stop gruelling winter marathon across the Pennines. Here at The Stand we’re a bit lazy. I don’t think any of us could race in the dark on no sleep across the snowy Pennines – the challenge of racing anywhere farther than the Library sounds inspirational to us. To hear more, and if you’re tempted to race across the Pennines, head to School I, Sallies Quad on Thursday at 6:30pm. Entry is free! 

No Likey, No Lighty: Project Zambia, the ones that brought us the Date Auction, is hosting Take Me Out. They are promising some lovely ladies looking for love (do we really need to attend? The ground floor of the library would be just as promising), and some strapping (really?) young men waiting in line for love. St Andrews Got Talent winner 2011, Leon O’Rourke, is doing his best Paddy McGuinness and with taglines like “So will Jack meet his Jill? Will the tinkie see the winkie?”, Take Me Out is no longer your guilty Saturday night pleasure but a hilarious night in the Union. Tickets are only £4 in advance from outside the Union or £6 on the door at 7:30pm. Doors open at 8pm for an 8:30pm start.
 
 
‘The Frogs’! Just So Society presents ‘The Frogs’ – a musical that has graced Broadway for years is coming to St Andrews on Tuesday and Wednesday! The music and lyrics are all Stephen Sondheim but the cast is stellar St Andrews, and even includes a chorus of frogs! Tickets are only £5, available on the Union Website, and is going up in Venue 1 at 7:30 each night. Besides, ‘The Frogs’ has the most inspired posters to grace this town’s poster-boards since the election of Amanda Litherland. 
 
 
Number five is everything you haven’t managed to do in the past six weeks. We live by the sea but you haven’t been for a run on the sand all semester. Return those library books – you’ve got fines bigger than Freddie FForde’s campaign team. Go for a wander beyond the three streets that suck up your life, head to the Botanical Gardens or across the Old Course before you say goodbye to our grey auld toon for two weeks.