Breaking news

Do you have a summer wedding to attend, but can’t find exactly the right thoughtful and unique present for the happy couple?

Your problems may be over. 

Nothing suggests style, breeding and a love of Nature like a stuffed head mounted on the wall, and now you can achieve the same effect without the glassy stare and oddly misshapen features of the recipients when given the real thing.

Laura Cameron’s wonderful ‘woolidermy’ is currently for sale at Concrete Wardrobe on Broughton Street.

We thank reader John MacDonald for this photograph, taken recently in the Botanics. 

'It's a glorious field of predominantly yellow and occasionally blue wildflowers – quite unusual for the Botanics – situated next to the 1970s glasshouses.

'A section of ground has been planted with red poppies as a memorial to the fallen soldiers of World War I.

'However, the gardeners must have planted other wildflowers to come out at a time when the poppies are dormant.'

The last time I wrote about the etiquette at swing parks, I almost sent one reader to sleep (see comments here), so please read with caution. 

Back then, I commented on the joy a parent feels when they see an empty set of swings.

We live in tumultuous times. 

Broughton has responded with customary wisdom, wit, and peculiarity. 

We begin with a torn sticker adhering to a lamppost in Haddington Place. 

Foresight is a wonderful thing. 

If you’re heading off to sunny climes this weekend – Newhaven, perhaps, Porty, or North Berwick ­– the following advice may be of interest.

It appeared in an advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening news on Saturday 15 July, 1916.

This was a time, clearly, when everyone’s thoughts were focused on holidays and looking good.

BATHING WITHOUT INJURY

TO THE COMPLEXION.

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This small two-year-old local is normally in and out of the backgreens behind Cornwallis Place, and sometimes finds her way along as far as the allotments off East Scotland Street Lane. 

But in a change of behaviour which is completely out of character, Harper’s been missing since yesterday for no apparent reason. 

She has a very white chest, distinctive light and dark grey markings on her back, and is chipped and neutered. 

She responds to her owners calling her by name, but is likely to be more timid around strangers.

Photographers Paul and Lynn Henni live in Broughton, and a sense of local knowledge and affection pervades their exhibition of Edinburgh scenes currently on show in the Roamin’ Nose. 

Entitled The Elements, it consists mostly of cityscapes, many of which will be familiar to Spurtle readers, although not always at the times of day or in the weather conditions pictured here. 

What makes great portrait photography?

Last summer’s Stardust – the David Bailey retrospective on the Mound – left this reviewer cold. So too does the hugely acclaimed Jason Bell’s work now on show at Gayfield Creative Spaces as part of the Retina Scottish International Photography Festival 2016. 

To my mind, both collude in, rather than comment upon, the cult of celebrity. I don’t trust their occasional moments of apparent candour. 

The nation’s attention may have been focused on Wimbledon recently, but more important things have been going on closer to home.

Drummond Tennis Club’s Mark Fergie gives us the low-down.

DTC entered five teams into the leagues this year and had mixed fortunes.

Ladies 1st Team finished bottom of Division 2, and it’s fair to say that it was a season of transition. Some new players came in and did well, especially Jenny who formed a decent partnership with Fiona.

What’s the first thing that springs to mind when a friend comes to visit Edinburgh for the first time? 

Possibly not: Let’s perform some difficult Mozart and Beethoven sonatas in public. 

But that’s what professional violinist and local resident Sijie ‘Susie’ Chen and her friend, pianist Liang-yu Wang, did. 

The two treated local residents to a pair of lovely recitals at Broughton St Mary’s Church on 8 and 9 July in support of Re-Act (Refugee Action Scotland).