Breaking news

Various more or less spine-chilling apparitions have been cropping up around Broughton since 1 October.

So far, we have resisted reporting them for fear of encouraging the appearance of Christmas lights before Bonfire Night.

But now that we’re well into the second half of the month, this seems like a reasonable point at which to introduce our favourites so far.

We begin (top-right) with Granny Thomson’s seasonal spiders on Bellevue Place. The hanging bones in the foliage are particularly effective in poor light.

Proposals by City of Edinburgh Council to restrict access in and out of Montgomery Street are the focus of debate. 

The plans (TRO 16/58 and RSO 16/13) seem to be under-explained measures connected to the forthcoming Phase 5 or Phase 6 of the Leith Project. 

MARRIOTT HOTEL TO OPEN SOON 

For the last seven years, many locals have been anxiously monitoring the progress – or lack of it – of development at 1–3 Baxter’s Place. 

As scheme after scheme failed to materialise, and the Category A-listed frontage turned green before our eyes, it seemed as if the structure was more likely to mysteriously burn down than find a new purpose.

Police Scotland released a press release this morning which we reproduce below in full. 

Police in Edinburgh are appealing for information to help trace a 17-year old reported missing.

Ingrid Daniels or Makuwaza travelled to Edinburgh from England in early October.

She had been staying in the Newhaven area, where she was last seen around 7.15pm on Thursday 13 October. 

BLEARY-EYED SPURTLE WANDERS IN 

Fireworks, massed oompah bands and a baton-twirling Councillor Frank Ross marked the opening of Lidl’s latest supermarket, on Logie Green Road this morning.

Actually, some of those may have been hallucinations: 8am is outwith Spurtle’s normal competent-operating window. Reliable witnesses tell us that around 30 people and a dog queued in the rain before the doors swung open and a sodden piper struck up Dave Lewis’s Lament.

The development of eight houses on land between Broughton Road and the Claremonts has been given the green light.

A Scottish Government Reporter today allowed the appeal by Provincial Property Holdings Ltd against City of Edinburgh Council’s earlier unanimous refusal of planning consent for the scheme on land also known as Sandy Hill and Heriot Hill (see pdf at foot of page, and Breaking news, 10.2.16).

(AND ALSO LIKED TO VISIT) … 

On 4 October, late afternoon, a fine smoky grey cat sallied through the open door of Concrete Wardrobe on Broughton Street. 

After sniffing around, it settled on a rug by a mirror, doubtless admiring itself. Then it moved to the luscious comforts in the shop window where it was admired in turn by passers-by. 

I remember sitting contentedly in a Charlotte Square deckchair a couple of months back. 

Pausing at a particularly poignant point in my book, I looked up and there, through the enveloping smug, I could just about make out a handful of fellow Festival-goers. To my absolute horror, they all seemed to be quietly enjoying the midweek afternoon and not at all thinking about class struggle. 

How despicably self-satisfied, I thought. 

Rayprographics seeks to vary its planning consent with a new plan for the 626 sq.m. site at 5 Warriston Road (Ref. 16/04263/FUL). 

The plans are not particularly easy to read, but it looks to us as if the substantially revised scheme, by McCreadie Design Ltd, comprises 5 storeys providing six flats (one 1-bed, three 2-bed, two 3-bed). The scheme approved earlier comprised 10 flats. 

Drummond students have achieved a second consecutive victory in the Enterprising Maths in the Lothians competition. 

Benjamin Sterratt (S4, pictured left) Daniel Farrow (S3), Mhairi Dickie (S4) and Sara Leszczynska (S3, pictured right) tackled a variety of mathematical puzzles and problems to beat off competition from 26 teams from across Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian.