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Meet Reay.
Or rather, meet Reay again. We last featured him back in May 2014 when he temporarily wandered off in search of his brother.
Now he’s gone AWOL again, this time in protest at major works in progress at his home on the east side of Dublin Street.
Reay’s usual haunts are Barony Street and the Dublin Street mews. You can easily recognise him as he’s a big, middle-aged Bengal with a torn ear from various undisclosed territorial encounters.
MAGNIFICENT AND ON THE MARCH
This afternoon’s Processions event was a joyful, multi-coloured, multi-aged celebration of UK women’s suffrage 100 years on.
It was a raucous, rhythmic and good-humoured commemoration of women’s past successful struggles, their current achievements, and ongoing social and political challenges.
It all began in the Meadows with sensible arrangements on an epic scale.
Residents on Broughton Place Lane are tearing their hair out at Council inaction over blocked access to their homes.
The quiet cul-de-sac is narrow at the best of times, but narrower still at the Lyon & Turnbull end overlooking St Mary’s RC Primary School.
Unfortunately, this is precisely where thoughtless visitors keep parking their cars, often making it impossible for residents to get their own vehicles in or out.
At other times it’s a fiendishly difficult tight squeeze, resulting in bumps, scrapes and bits getting knocked off in the process.
Cornerstone Property Development, the people behind recent proposals for 7–8 Baxter's Place, now seek permission to change the use of the former Royal Bank of Scotland at 2–3a Blenheim Place (Ref. 18/02357/FUL).
This morning, councillors voted unanimously in favour of taking the application for party flats on Baxter’s Place to a hearing.
The Development Management Subcommittee were responding to a call by Cllr Claire Miller, who wanted a more detailed consideration of the case we reported HERE yesterday.
OFFICIAL BACKING FOR PARTY FLATS
Back in 2016 we reported Council consent for conversion to domestic use of the former Edinburgh City Football Club at 7–8 Baxter’s Place (Ref. 15/01238/FUL; Issue 250).
Spurtle visited Comely Bank Cemetery for the first time this morning. It was opened in 1843, and we had hoped to discover a wealth of funerary architecture matching that in the jungles of Warriston. No such luck.
Wherever the Victorian monuments are, they evaded us. But there were many interesting 20th-century compensations, including this curiosity with a Broughton connection.
It is the grave of John Adam Porter (and family), born 1894, who died in 1952 aged 58.
Here, in more detail than we had room to report in Issue 274, is Tom Hodges, whose return to Edinburgh is marked this evening by the launch of Typewronger Books in gallery space within long-established MacNaughtan’s on Haddington Place.
‘We’re going to be stocking a variety of new titles, by which I mean not second-hand,’ Hodges told the Spurtle.
Talk about action-packed!
The June Spurtle is out and about from tomorrow, positively bursting at the seams with local news.
Page 1 sums up three major stories for north-east Edinburgh and contains not only a tiger but an astonishing 27 bullet points – more than appear in the King James Bible and complete works of Dickens combined.
Page 2 kicks off with, um, three other major stories for north-east Edinburgh and an unlikely intervention from the President of the United States.
CANONMILLS CAMPAIGNERS CALL IT A DAY
Organisers of the campaign to save 1-6 Canonmills Bridge (the former Earthy shop) issued a statement to supporters this morning.
It’s the end of the road. This particular battle is lost.
The news will come as a major disappointment for many. But this was still a valiant fight for local values and planning democracy, and locals involved can certainly take pride in their determination and resourcefulness.