An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
Having first checked that our travel insurance and visas were up-to-date, and that we'd had all the requisite jags, Spurtle has been travelling south this week in search of adventure.
We've been photographing the sights as we went along, with mixed results.
A view of the Pentlands seen through the monument to Dugald Stewart (above) worked well enough.
Pointless (ˈpɔɪntləs) adj. Having little or no sense, use, or purpose.
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For all Broughton’s beauty and splendour, there are some things which are truly and utterly pointless. Below I highlight a few of our beloved barony's disjointed peculiarities and I hope that with your help we will be able to catalogue them all.
Bellevue Place traffic island
If you think the man in this photo looks pleasantly chilled and self-confident, think again.
Behind the shades, he has the deepest respect for, and a healthy concern about, the possible presence of polar bears.
‘They're awesome predators,’ he says. ‘11ft 6" long, 4ft tall at the shoulder, 12 foot tall standing upright, 1,001 kilos – one of them would certainly fill your front room.
‘What’s more, they’re smart. They’re big. It’s hard to see them coming. And they can run at 30 mph.
‘You can’t afford to be relaxed around them for one minute.’
Outline plans for the former Royal High School (RHS) went on public display there today as part of the pre-application notification process. The exhibition continues tomorrow (10am–7pm), and there will be another – featuring more detailed designs – in March.
These beguiling and rather odd images form part of a new exhibition – STEMS – at McNaughtan’s Bookshop on Haddington Place.
They are the work of a young Glasgow-based artist, Jamie Johnson, who graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art with a degree in Illustration four years ago and then went on to study Advanced Intaglio Printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art.
The former Royal High School building on Regent Road is formally 'At Risk'. But this fact has been obscured from the public for three years following a request from City of Edinburgh Council.
The startling news came to light in answers to Spurtle's questions to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). Since 1990 this body has maintained the Buildings at Risk Register (BARR) on behalf of Historic Scotland.
BY BARNARDO'S GRANT GILROY
Many people know about the concept of fostering and adoption – very few are aware of ‘Supported Carers’. Barnardo’s Lothian Supported Carers Scheme (LSCS) is campaigning to change that.
LSCS is campaigning to raise awareness of the needs of young people who have left the care system and/or do not have a family home they can stay in. Supported Carers provide that home. In simple terms they act like ‘landlords’ or ‘hosts’ and offer a young person a room in their home.
Attempts to solve the problem of the Stephen’s Church clock chime appear to have got nowhere.
Locals have been divided between those who find the hourly bell at night nuisance and those who consider it a welcome presence which predates a small number of complainants.
City of Edinburgh Council officials decided back in late August 2014 that the bell was indeed too loud (Breaking news, 2.9.14).
The term ‘blue faced’, when it is not being used to describe a popular breed of longwool Leicester sheep, has an altogether more modern meaning with which many readers will already be familiar.
Among hip people, like the Spurtle team, it refers to the practice of emailing or texting in such a way that the device used casts a blue-ish hue onto the face of the messager.
‘Hey, dude,’ we often say to each other at the start of the distribution process, ‘quit blue-facin. We’ve got to go and hit da hood with da ink.’