Breaking news

The Union Gallery will host a free talk on Thursday 19 August by Bill Hare, Honorary Curator of the Art In Healthcare Collection and a lecturer in Scottish art at Edinburgh University.

Art in Healthcare (AIH) – established in 1991 and now based in the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street – has built up over 1,300 original Scottish works, including pieces by John Bellany, Alan Davie, Elizabeth Blackadder, Calum Innes, Stephen Campbell, and Union co-owner and artist Alison Auldjo.

Broughton Street's Villeneuve Wines are reintroducing their informal, semi-tutored tasting-sessions, starting on Thursday 26 August.

For £10 each, around 20 participants will convene at 7:30pm upstairs in Urban Angel to be greeted with a glass of fizz, then float home around 9:30pm, wiser about ten vintages, greatly refreshed, and differently equipped to face the challenges of the recession on Friday.

The plan by the Cameron Guest House Group (CGHG) to convert offices at 34-8 York Place into a cheap hotel have been withdrawn (see Breaking news, 1.5.10).

No reason was given by the firm's agent, but past form suggests CGHG will return with a revised plan for the Grade-A listed property before too long.

The proposal had drawn criticism from some quarters over fears that what appeared to be budget holiday accommodation would in fact be used as some form of hostel.

Bellevue Road residents are mystified and annoyed by strange nocturnal goings-on.

Broughton St Mary's Parish Church on Bellevue Crescent are seeking craftspeople for their fund-raising sale on Saturday 23 October,10:30am–1:00pm.

Tables are available – small £5.00, larger ones £10. 

If you would like to book a table to sell your crafts, contact Mrs Debbie Buckingham on  0131 557 5051. 

The two, local, flood-flattened Gormleys in the Water of Leith (Breaking news, 22.7.10) have been helped to their feet in the last few days.

Divers, crane operators and men waving their arms about re-erected the figures in St Mark's Park and Bonnington after an enforced 3-week sojourn underwater.

In an uncertain world, there is something reassuring about librarians: that combination of faith in the power of published ideas, confidence in the safe storage and rational organisation of thought.

Take today's posting by Edinburgh City Libraries. It concerns a book by the splendidly named Nathaniel Lachenmeyer – 13: The World's Most Popular Superstition – which apparently unravels the truth behind this 'most enduring of suspicions' (including its surprising 20th-century origin in a work of fiction).

Tommy Fitchet grew up in Dundee, moved via Glasgow and London to Arran, and recently – at first reluctantly – realised Edinburgh was the place to further his career as an easily accessible and mobile 21st-century artist. In January he settled in Stockbridge.

Despairing of ever finding an affordable dedicated studio in the capital, he astutely secured premises at 5 Rodney Street where he could combine active painting (at the back) with commercially remunerative exhibition space (to the front).

Singer/songwriter/performer Hannah Reade is organising a not-for-profit 'micro-festival', or 'informal performance, workshop, and discussion space' or 'Fringe of the Fringe' in the Pilrig Street home where she grew up.

In an August programme labelled 'The Living Room', her family's living room will loom large, but expect bedrooms and corridors to feature too, whilst homemade soup, scones and jam will be on offer in the kitchen café.

The Yakety Yak Language Café has announced local venues for its informal foreign-language conversation sessions.

Small interested groups, matched for current ability, meet to chat in French, Italian, German or Spanish (not all at once) under the guidance of a professional linguist.