This interesting graffiti at the Broughton Street end of Albany Street Lane makes use of a pre-existing incision in a random flagstone.

At first glance it reads like a half-remembered song lyric, but in fact it loosely paraphrases part of Mao Zedong’s concluding speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party on 6 November 1938.

We thought it might be interesting today to quote from Zedong’s paradoxical Problems of War and Strategy at greater length.

Following our article about a (more interesting than expected) access cover on George Street, reader Sam Murray got in touch about another.

This one is situated on Clarendon Crescent, and includes the intriguing detail ‘BOYCE & JOHNSTON, BEAVER BANK FOUNDRY’. Murray and Spurtle investigated further.

GREENSIDE IMPROVEMENT.

W. D. Macgregor writes: The lecture by Judge Brown on Tuesday night on the housing of the Edinburgh poor has drawn attention to the condition of affairs in Greenside, and though it might perhaps be urged that the dark shadows in Judge Brown’s description are a trifle overdrawn, it will not be denied by anyone who knows the district that there is urgent need of improvement.

TAKE CARE BEFORE BUYING KITTENS ONLINE

OK, let’s start by stating the obvious … Awwwwwwwwwwww!

Now we have your attention, we can move on. Are you thinking of buying a kitten?

If so, you’ll probably have noticed how hard they are to come by these days.

And those that are available tend to appear online at eye-boggling prices. A quick survey on Gumtree this morning showed prices ranging from £250 to £1,300. For a non-pedigree kitten, the average was £472.

These are prices hitherto almost unheard of.

Last night, the London Street Grocery closed its doors for the last time.

The shop – a staple of life in the barony for the last 53 years – is now shuttered and empty.

Business has dried up in the months since Covid struck, with many people staying at home and ordering deliveries to their doors. The prolonged suspension of Broughton’s restaurant trade (which the firm supplied with excellent fruit and veg) and the absence of Drummond pupils cannot have helped either.

Critics have raised serious doubts about suggestions for reinventing Edinburgh’s 'front-line civic stewardship' as potentially unfair, unworkable and unaccountable.

The proposals emerged yesterday in a leaked report by Leith-based policy think-tank Dark Blue Sky (DBS). It argues a three-tier system operating on capital streets could complement the work of police and make life in the increasingly crowded city centre safer and more pleasurable for visitors and residents alike.

As you read this, advanced copies of the April Spurtle are already dispersing across the barony like personal items storm-torn from a clothes line and caught in the branches of a tree just out of reach from your opposite neighbour’s first-floor kitchen window.

Page 1 looks at ways to address a tatty muddle that ought to be the capital’s tiara. It continues with a lumpen mess, reports Picardy residents’ demands for better, and concludes with first news of the forthcoming Spurtle election hustings. And there’s a view of a doo.