As you read this, advance copies of the April Spurtle are already spreading across Broughton like strangely musclebound birdwatchers wandering innocently across the beaches of Kharg Island counting puffins.
Issue 360 begins on Page 1 with news of opposition, past and ongoing, to ever more visitor rooms in the area when what Edinburgh citizens really want is homes. There’s news, too, of Council penny-pinching in Powderhall and a People & Places puzzle which over 2 months perplexed and pissed off our readers in unequal proportions. We announce the winner.
Everybody loves a local-authority report about money, and we detail one on Page 2 which will have rule-compliant motorists spluttering into their cornflakes for the financial year to come. We report on an outspoken leader with a gift for mending fences, local soil you wouldn’t want to grow potatoes in, money spent for your own good, sit-upons, yellow lines, Youth and the great divide between old and new.
A significant cypress, confusing statistics and haphazard record-keeping feature on Page 3, as does retrospectively depressing good news for motorists travelling to the Continent. Look no further for book bargains, hillside revenue and declinations, vulnerable road users, functional aesthetics and bonnie, brave and beneficent American women.
Page 4 concludes with some meaningless helpful signage, a creative squeeze, collapses, a dead dog, bedrock and damaged beds.
In short, if it’s happening anywhere between Pilrig Street and Stockbridge, Queen Street and Canonmills, you’ll find it in tiny print typeset by ants on the 4 pages of high-density news and views in Issue 360.
Pick up your black-and-white copy from shops and services, pubs, libraries and plastic dispensers on railings across the barony and beyond. Alternatively, download a colourful pdf from our website here from midnight on Tuesday.
