Small, neat, and bespectacled, Bert Dalrymple appears like a wrongly matched creation from a tops and tails game, the dapper upper-half shirt and tie quirkily at odds with the very large white apron below. As for Kind Kyttock, she is one of those fictional characters who nearly 500 years on has become a legend, in this case for hospitality. After seven years in heaven she was so tired of the sour ale that she stole out to the ale house at the gate, an action that did not find favour with St Peter and so she returned to the alehouse where she brewed and baked for travellers on the long road to Heaven.

A Fife woman from Falkland, her story was adopted by the first owner of the tea-room which bears her name in the conservation village, and it has become a

by-word for simple, traditional food from homemade soup to baking. Bert and his wife Liz have twice been the hosts at Kind Kyttock's Kitchen. They first bought it in 1972, when Bert, a man of many talents, was keen to escape the pressured world of advertising in Glasgow. At that time it was one room serviced by the kitchen in the house next door, where: ''You had to leave the back door open to see who was in the tea-room,'' says Bert.

They enjoyed life in the village so much that they bought and renovated an old house in the High Street, and as their two young sons began to get underfoot in the tea-room. Bert went back to illustration, but when the tea-room was put up for sale again four years later, he and Liz persuaded themselves it hadn't been such a bad life. First-time round a sunny day would bring out hungry customers prepared to queue down the street. Those ''golden days'' will never return, he admits, not least because there are now several rival tea-rooms in the village.

The original seventeenth-century cottage has been extended and there are now two rooms plus the substantial kitchen. How Bert came to be chief cook, master baker, soup-stirrer and king of the jams and chutneys is one of life's little chances that he relishes. ''It was advertised as a tea-room and art gallery and it was the gallery which originally attracted me,'' says Bert with the ironic smile of one who was proved wrong.

how did a would-be artist turn into a craftsman in dough. The answer seems to be that he likes a challenge. An Ayrshire man, as his name suggests, he says modestly that his mother was a traditional baker and other than what he learned from her, he is self-taught. He bakes every day: bread, scones, and pancakes as the staples plus a list which reads like the fevered imaginings of the strictest dieter or the exiled Scot pining for

the land o' cakes: shortbread (petticoat tail, millionaire's or date) fruit loaf, fruit square, Campbell fudge cake, carrot cake, chocolate crispy cake, isle of Rhum gingerbread, finished with what the menu calls ''a braw wee meringue with freshly whipped double cream.''

From this astonishing spread of afternoon tea, Bert judiciously selects the ginger oatie as the speciality of the house. It is a recipe he begged, in the traditional manner of the passionate cook, from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. His don't taste quite the same as theirs, a phenomenon which is one of the things which fascinates him about the business of baking, but they seem to take the biscuit with his customers.

His insistence on high standards keeps regulars making return trips from Edinburgh, Perth, and St Andrews as well as more immediate locals who look most of all for consistency, he says, which means the menu varies little but offers a wide choice within its limited repertoire of soups, sandwiches, baked potatoes, omelettes, salads - toasted, open or traditional.

''So many places are tempted by the availability of ready-made food that everything is in danger of tasting monotonous. Everything here has a unique flavour because we make everything ourselves including the preserves and the coleslaw,'' he adds.

Sometimes it must seem that his cooking skills come second to the science of guestimating the number of customers. Bert reckons he has it down to a fine art, partly because people who know how busy it can be will book ahead. He ruthlessly applies the rule that anyone who is 10 minutes late loses their table.

That apart, there is a kindness in the cottage, where a fire cheers the dreichest November day, and a rainbow of pastel colours dances on the table cloths and tableware. As a last sup before Heaven, Kyttock would probably approve.