Breaking news

The sun is out, the days are lengthening, and the light is definitely improving.

If your home suddenly feels dirty and covered in smudges, get out in the open air and take part in the first of our regular photographic quizzes running from Friday to Friday each week this spring and summer.

We’re looking at animals – not just in Broughton – but across the whole city. And not your boring old living animals, quacking and mooing and stinging people in the way of conventional wildlife, but dead-as-a-doornail animals shaped, sculpted or moulded by human hand.

Bellevue Chapel on Rodney Street seeks planning permission for extensions to the side (on Cornwallis Place) and rear (Ref. 16/02317/FUL).

The proposed development’s extra 122 sq.m would mostly be gained by building over the current area of railed-off chippings. The additional floorspace is intended to accommodate the independent evangelical church’s growing congregation and community events.

RHYS FULLERTON REVIEWS ILONA SZALAY: QUEEN OF SWORDS 

After less than a year, Ilona Szalay is back at the Arusha Gallery with another provocative exhibition. 

Her oil-on-glass paintings here in Witness last August were one of my highlights of the summer, and I’m pleased to see her return. But be warned – these exceptional new works are highly personal and often seem intrusive. 

To nobody’s great surprise, Provincial Property Holding Ltd (PPH) has appealed the Council’s refusal of planning permission for eight townhouses between Broughton Road and the Claremonts (Ref. 15/02335/FUL, see Breaking news, 10.2.16). 

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