As you read this, printed copies of the August Spurtle are already finding their way across the barony like sunbeams newly escaped from a top-security darkened cloud-chamber.
Issue 298 begins as usual on Page 1, this time with news of a development on the brink and a rumour scotched. There’s coverage, too, of a roundly criticised proposal, ineffective enforcement, cancellations of cramming, and a whack in the yack for Spurtle’s view of the monumentally offensive.
Page 2 follows logically, leading with Edinburgh Council’s thriving bad consultations, a storm in a New Town teacup, and a cry from the sphincter at the state of civilisation. There’s good news from Rodney Street and East Scotland Street Lane, but bad news on anti-social behaviour and departing friends elsewhere.
This month, Page 3 carries an exclusive on classic defensive practices revived in the New Town, carrots and sticks, footless visitors, and ‘envoys from the ancients’. Not only that but also crimes, little green men, proposals, objections, and sensible suggestions for driving the socially unreconstructed purple with irritation.
Finally and controversially, Page 4 now precedes Page 1 in fully flattened special editions of the paper. This allows space for footway news, a correction on trains, serious charges, spikes, and new ways to exhaust small children with culture.
For pandemic-related reasons, a reduced number of paper copies will appear in some but not all the familiar spots across Broughton and beyond from today, and a vastly increased number of pdfs will be available for collection from our website here after midnight tonight.
If you have any ideas, views, news, images or spare limbs you’d like to share with the Spurtle, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please email us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk.
STOP PRESS–Provisional distribution from: Bellevue Express and Broughton St Convenience Stores, Real Foods, Vino, London St Grocer, Claremont Food and Wine, Spey Terrace, Leopold Place and Canonmills Newsagents, Tattie Shaw's, Scotland Street book box, Queen Street railings and Hopetoun Crescent railings. Other choice spots will emerge shortly.
