An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
Yesterday's piece on serious traffic congestion in Edinburgh's East End touched a raw nerve (Breaking news, 13.9.16; see foot of page).
Our Facebook post alone has reached nearly 95,000 people since this time (4.30pm) yesterday, and the total is still rising.
Today, we approached City of Edinburgh Council and asked for a statement on:
If you find yourself caught up in slow-moving East End traffic over the next few days, here are 15 possible explanations.
We found them on the Council’s helpful EdinTravel page.
1. St Andrew Square, south side
Redevelopment of 3–8 St Andrew Square. Lane and footway closures. Other ad hoc arrangements as required for removal of spoil, delivery of materials etc.
South leg of Square closed 1.06.16–23.10.16.
THE BALLAD OF DUNDAS STREET
I settle into the window seat and watch as a light drizzle attempts to motivate late afternoon.
Behind me, the clang and hiss of my order makes a brief, unsuccessful, attempt to enliven this sedate New Town coffee shop.
The rain becomes a downpour, pooling on metallic tables and undulating pavements. Large umbrellas are unfurled, anoraks dived into. For a moment, Dundas Street displays the energetic grace of a late summer regatta.
For our next Edinburgh safari, we’re leaving the realms of everyday beasties and going all mythological.
Not for us, though, your run-of-the-mill dragons and workaday phoenixes. We want hybrids joining two or more distinct creatures together in a kind of alternative capital coalition.
If you can identify where the beasties below were found, let us know. If you can find further instances – send us the photos for your chance to win lasting fame.
Warriston Post Office in Brandon Terrace has closed.
But locals still mourning the loss of the London Street and Newhaven Road POs, the loss of the handily late posting box at Brunswick Road sorting office and the removal of the St James PO to the distant reaches of Princes Mall can breathe a sigh of relief.
Warriston will only remain closed for a week during refurbishment, and will have longer opening hours when it reopens.
Scottish Government reporters have today granted a sist (a legal delay) to the appeals by Duddingston House Properties (DHP) and the Urbanist Group against refusal of planning permission/listed building consent for their hotel scheme at the old Royal High School.
One doesn’t expect happy news from a cemetery, so none of what follows should come as a particular surprise.
These researches are not intended to be intrusively morbid. They have been made in reaction to gravestone inscriptions in Rosebank Cemetery which were surely intended by relatives to trigger memory or spark interest among future generations.
In that sense, these short and melancholy stories constitute polite responses to long-standing invitations.
Look at the spray-painted image adjacent and reproduced at greater magnification below.
It appears about halfway along the Rodney Street Tunnel, on the right as you approach King George V Park.
What do you see?
Some locals find a rather wild, unsentimentalised head and shoulder of a unicorn – nostril-snorting, teeth-baring and tongue-lolling – facing left to right.
Last Thursday we repeated on Facebook and Twitter the question raised in September’s printed version of the Spurtle: Has Edinburgh reached saturation point?
Overwhelmingly, readers said: Yes.
Below, we’ve cut and pasted their replies to either us or to the Cockburn Association, which repeated our enquiry. If you’d like to add your tuppence-worth …
If you’re in any doubt about whether we are now enjoying the end of summer or the beginning of autumn, you have two ways to settle the question.
Either you can go to the BBC website here and choose between three contrasting definitions: meteorological, astronomical and phenological.
Or you can go for a wander up Broughton Street and look at the A-board outside the Basement Café.
The north-facing side is now advertising a morbid three-day celebration of Halloween.