Breaking news

Following the recommendations of an Edinburgh Schools report, Council Leader Andrew Burns today announced that CEC will set up an independently chaired inquiry into building faults at PPP1 schools across the city. 

Political group leaders will discuss the inquiry’s terms of reference this week,  and they will be discussed with the chair before work begins. Who that chair will be has not been confirmed, but Burns seeks someone ‘who commands respect within the construction industry’. 

Visitors to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on Saturday were very much enjoying looking at sheds. Yes, sheds! 

The Ideal Hut Show is an open-air installation consisting of 18 off-the-shelf garden sheds reinvented by architects and designers from home and abroad. 

Forget the sunshine – sheds were the highlight of the day.

The sheds on show (I can’t believe I just said that) come in a variety of shapes, colours and sizes. 

It’s hard to imagine – looking at scenes like these, captured yesterday – that waters so close to home can sometimes turn fatal, even in summer. 

Such was the case on Saturday 20 June 1936, as yachts competed in the Royal Forth Yacht Club’s regatta at Granton Harbour. 

In the last race of the day, five yachts made for the West Gunnet buoy in a strong north-easterly wind and heavy swell. All were struggling to complete the course, and another had already turned back. 

WHAT I THINK ABOUT WHEN I THINK ABOUT WALKING 

Why do I walk? 

One reason is to try to understand what I really think. It’s an attempt to capture the insights that, like fireflies of the unconscious, flicker at night then vanish into the pale mists of dawn. 

I’m talking about the kind of purposeless, meaningful stroll that, rather more than daydreaming, is akin to being on the couch, on the road.

At 10am yesterday, a queue of lorries started to form in McDonald Place as they waited to gain entrance into Batleys cash and carry. 

The Batleys yard was already full of HGVs, and at 10.15am – when the situation hadn’t changed – local resident Alistair Robertson began to take pictures. A parking attendant arrived to sort the problem out. 

Spurtle was pleasantly surprised by this addition to the Bellevue Crescent streetscape earlier today. 

It offered a refreshing change to the ranks of black Mercedes, Jags and New Town tractors normally found across this part of town. 

Was it, we wondered, the first in a fashion for sober judges going jungly in the world of youth culture? Or just a single rogue banker, releasing his inner velociraptor?

Cheap and cheerful

Sixty-five local children will be running later this month to raise money for play equipment and picnic seating in the playground at Broughton Primary School. 

The pupils are taking part in the 1.5km and 2km events of the Edinburgh Marathon Festival on Saturday 28 May.

Transformation of the Botanic Cottage will be complete later this month when members of the public are finally able to walk inside and look around at a special Garden Gala event.

Today, Spurtle enjoyed a sneak preview of the newly repositioned, reconstructed and refurbished building, first completed 250 years ago on Leith Walk in May 1766.

An increasingly noisy row has broken out on Dundas Street concerning early-morning disturbance or the lack of it. 

Archipelago Artisan Bakery at No. 39 has been granted retrospective planning permission to change its use from a Class 1 bakery to a hybrid Class 4 (making of baked goods for wholesale). 

NEIGHBOURHOOD PARTNERSHIP FACES CRITICISM 

Spurtle has nothing against Leith. 

We love it. We visit it daily and report aspects of it which are relevant to Broughton on a regular basis.